LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 






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UNITED STATES OF A3IERH A. 



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COURAGE 



COURAGE 



BY 



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CHARLES WAGNER 



AUTHOR OF " YOUTH " 



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NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1894 



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Copyright, 1804, 
By Dodd, Mead and Company. 



All Rights Reserved. 



2£nttocrsttg 19rrss: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



FOREWORD. 

After having read my book called " Youth" 
some of my friends, chiefly young persons, re- 
quested me to write a shorter work on the same 
subject ; one which could easily be carried about 
and read, and which, above all, should contain a 
few necessary suggestions for a working ideal. 

In the face of such a demand it was not possi- 
ble for me to offer as an excuse the trouble it 
would give me. While trying to do what was 
asked of me, however, I have endeavoured to repeat 
myself as little as possible. The present volume 
is not, therefore, a summary of" Youths It is a 
new work, which has its individual character 
and aim. I trust it may receive as warm a wel- 
come as its predecessor. 

C. W. 



TO MY YOUNG READERS. 



I know you as if I were yourself. I 
have only to close my eyes to see myself 
at your age, living, hoping, seeking, lov- 
ing, erring. Think, then, when you open 
this book, that you are meeting a friend a 
few years older than yourself. He is like 
you, only somewhat more mature and with 
a wider horizon. He is so interested in 
you that he would gladly become, at in- 
tervals, the table at which you write, the 
anvil on which you strike, the tree be- 
neath which you rest to think or weep, in 
order to penetrate more profoundly into 
your mind. 

These lines are not written for any par- 
ticular class of young people. I have 
sought to speak of those things which are 



Vlll TO MY YOUNG READERS. 

common to all, being clay by clay more 
convinced that the nature of man is every- 
where identical. However, I have not 
been able to avoid thinking rather more 
especially of those whose morning was 
gloomy and whose youth was hard. 

Goethe declares in his idealised history 
of his life that " what we desire in our 
youth we possess abundantly in our old 
age." An astonishing saying, and one 
which seems inconsistent with truth ; but 
if we look at it more closely, such is not 
the case. Man, indeed, applies himself 
with ardour to the pursuit of that which 
he desires ; and, whether his ambition be 
noble or the reverse, it is seldom that he 
does not end by fulfilling it, in part at 
least. 

Our life is eventually stamped by our 
ideal. No one, therefore, can watch the 
tendency of his desires too carefully. 
What we most often lack in youth is the 
knowledge of what it is wisest to desire. 
To wish for vain things is to take a will- 



TO MY YOUNG READERS ix 

o'-the-wisp for our guide along the road. 
How many of us have wandered in this 
way after these uncertain lanthorns, which 
promised happiness and but led us into 
the swamps ! 

I should like to make you desire the 
things that are real, that are worth being 
loved and acquired by stress and toil ; and 
among all these things there is nothing to 
be compared with force. Force is itself a 
virtue ; and by virtue I understand every 
power that excites in us intenser life, and 
joy, and hope. 

The history of ancient Greece tells us of 
a young man brought up among women, 
dressed in the garments of women, from 
whom, by reason of their timorous solici- 
tude, they sought to hide the fact that he 
was a man. But one day the trumpet call 
to war was sounded in his presence. At 
once all the artificial trappings of his 
effeminate education fell, and his true soul 
stood revealed. Our every-clay existence 
often has the effect of making us forget 



X TO MY YOUNG READERS. 

who we are. It smothers us, according to 
our lot, beneath sparkling gewgaws or sor- 
did rags, either of which are unworthy of 
us. But there are calls which awake the 
soul ; may this book accomplish this pur- 
pose for you ! 

I should like to sound in your ears a 
clarion call that would fire your heart. I 
should like to reveal to you a vision of 
force, of benevolence, of consecrated man- 
liness, after which it would be impossible 
for you to be satisfied with enervating 
pleasure, or to give yourself up to barren 
discouragement. Let us hope that my 
wish may be fulfilled, both for your own 
sake and for the sake of those who love 
you ! And now I pray for inspiration and 
power from on high, that I may be granted 
the power to speak to you the word of 
life. 

C. WAGNER. 
All-Saints Day, 1893. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

HOW TO ACQUIRE FORCE. 

To live ; that is the great thing. In order to live well, 
one must have above all a good store of energy. 
The vanity of other advantages in the absence of 
energy. The pre-eminence of moral force over all 
other force. Physical courage and soul courage. 
Moral power the object of both our admiration and 
regret; it is the thing we are most lacking in . 21-29 

CHAPTER II. 

THE VALUE OF LIFE. 

In order to attain moral power we must go to the 
sources whence it springs. The object of this book 
is to point out some of these sources. The ideal 
one forms of life is one of the most important fac- 
tors. A respect for life is a source of power. Man 
acquires greater resolution in proportion as he dis- 
covers his capacity and sees clearly his goal. Each 
one of us is a hope of humanity, a hope of God; and 
our object is to become a power that makes for jus- 
tice. The essential dogma is to believe in life ; the 
greatest heresy consists in a lack of hope . . 33-42 



xii TA13LE OF CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER III. 

OBEDIENCE. 

Obedience is essential in order to apprehend the ob- 
ject of life. It is a source of moral force. Misun- 
derstanding on the subject of obedience. It is not 
servitude: it is the mother of liberty. The part 
that tradition and authority play in the beginning 
of life. The law, external at first, and then found 
to reside within one's self. Liberty consists in as- 
sociating one's will with the law which is at the bot- 
tom of all things. Blind obedience and respect for 
the individual conscience. Impersonality of con- 
science. Voluntary service. This is the proclama- 
tion of solidarity, and its most powerful instrument. 
Resignation 43-55 

CHAPTER IV. 

SIMPLICITY. 

The aim of a vulgar ambition is to separate one's self 
from the whole in order to conquer a privileged 
place for one's self. This ambition is the source of 
weakness and abasement. There is another ambi- 
tion, and the only noble one, which results from the 
conviction that human progress consists in growing 
better. He who knows this remains simple. True 
grandeur is for him something within himself. Be- 
lieving that our strength comes to us from our roots, 
he remains in contact with the robust life of the 
people 59-66 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. xill 

CHAPTER V. 

THE INWARD WATCH. 

The role vigilance plays in the world. The enemy : 
it is everything that weakens life, and hinders us 
from becoming what we ought to be. False secur- 
ity. The evil within us : each one carries within 
himself a power that can destroy him. The strug- 
gles of the soul; their necessity. Vigilance in- 
creased by a sense of responsibility. We are not 
alone to be considered. Each one is the guardian 
of his neighbour's interests. 

The inward judge. Men of conscience, and men who 
live for the gallery. Retirement and prayer. Lost 
battles. The vanquished and the wounded. Clem- 
ency and pardon. To have been conquered is also 
sometimes a source of strength 69-78 

CHAPTER VI. 

HEROIC EDUCATION. 

Nihil mirai'i. Admiration, and the spirit that carps 
and mocks. We live by respect, and we die by 
scoffing : let us drive out the scoffer ! 

Heroes: their role of pioneers and beginners. It is 
thanks to their enthusiasm that their influence 
reaches us. 

The power of example. 

Obscure heroism. If the pessimists are right, society 
would have been shipwrecked long ago. The good 
of which we are not cognisant counterbalances 
the evil which we know only too well. Seek the 
good! 81-91 



xiv TABLE OF CONTEXTS. 

CHAPTER VII. 

DIFFICULT BEGENNIN' S. 

Youth which suffers. Difficulties of the material and 
spiritual order. The school of poverty; what it 
teaches us. Those who have suffered and strug- 
gled are the strength of the world. The dangers 
to which a too easy youth is exposed. Voluntary 
poverty 95-108 

CHAPTER VIII. 

EFFORT AND WORK. 

Man fears effort as if it were an enemy, when it is 
his best friend. Effort is not only a sign of life, 
but a source of life. 

Work. Grave mistakes on the subject of work. It 
must not be considered only as a means of liveli- 
hood, or as marketable article. Fatal consequences 
of the mean ideas prevalent on the subject of work. 
Work is the organ by means of which man assimi- 
lates life in the largest sense of the word. Those 
who do not work shut themselves off from life. 
Cherished work. Fac et spera m-124 

CHAPTER IX. 

FAITHFULNESS. 

Chaotic lives: lost lives. Let us have unity in our 
lives. The perpetual temptation offered by cir- 
cumstances. A struggle for stability. .Man is a 
traveller who yearns for his native land. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XV 

Steadfast characters and fickle characters. The lov- 
ers of change. The depreciation of a man's word. 
Honesty. Sunday morality and every-day morality. 
Duplicity of life 127-137 



CHAPTER X. 

GAIETY. 

The radiance of good. Dismal morality. Throw- 
aside all air of gloom. Courageous gaiety and its 
triumphs. The successless work of the sulky 141-L 



CHAPTER XL 

MANLY HONOUR. 

Is honour a different thing for men and women ? We 
are pleased to believe that honour for a man con- 
sists, above all, of courage ; and for this reason I 
beseech him to remain pure. Respect for himself 
is a school of energy. Despite the difficulty it 
presents, chastity is the only acceptable ideal. Dif- 
ference between monachal chastity and the chas- 
tity I would recommend. We must not despise 
Nature, but follow her and respect her. The 
sources of life are confided to the guardianship of 
man. Noblesse oblige. Love is the brother of 
courage. Any deed contrary to true love is sullied 
with cowardice. True love is the source of strength, 
joy, and poetry 151-161 



Xvi TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE FEEBLE. 

The social function of the infirm : they are a perpet- 
ual reminder of the brotherhood of man 

T nt, f r b F Ie H Stand ^ aneloc l uent Potest against the 
right of the strongest, and refute this right The 
power of the unarmed. The strong confounded 
by the weak. 

The feeble one masters in the knowledge of suffering 
You who are strong go and take lessons of him. 

I he feeble as comforters. In suffering lies the sal- 
vation of the world 

• • • 105-173 

CHAPTER XIII. 

FEAR. 

Barbarism and refined civilisation are the chosen 
milieu of fear. Fear is the basest slavery. Those 
who take advantage of fear. 

A morality founded on fear. The fear of conse- 
quences is the beginning of immorality 

The fear of ridicule. 

The struggle against fear. Its kingdom is within us. 
Means to combat it. Small means. Great means. 
Love is the secret of true courage. He alone knows 
how to live and enjoy life who is ready at all times 
to sacrifice himself through love . . 17--1S0 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XV11 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE STRUGGLE. 

Concerning the use of energy. To live is to act, and 
to act is to struggle. There are various kinds of 
struggles. The struggle for existence cannot be the 
law of humanity, because the object of humanity is 
not existence, but justice. A man makes his great- 
est struggle for his greatest good. 

War. Very different meanings of this word. We 
can neither entirely approve of it, nor entirely con- 
demn it. 

In the fullest meaning of the word, the struggle will 
last as long as the world endures. The beauty of 
the struggle for justice. Its dominant character- 
istic is loyalty. Down with the weapons of cun- 
ning ! A loyal conflict is one of the most striking 
forms of collaboration 193-206 

CHAPTER XV. 

THE SPIRIT OF DEFENCE. 

Defence is not a right, but a duty. Vengeance and 

defence. Just defence is impersonal. 
Non-resistance. Christ as interpreted by Tolstoi. 

What we must think of the word: do not resist 

evil. It indicates the spirit of defence ; but Christ 

himself did not interpret it literally. 
The arms of gentleness. 
Those who say: "Let us mind our own business," 

" Do unto others as you would they should do unto 

you." 
Defence of the weak, the absent, and the dead 209-221 
2 



xvin TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAFFER XVI. 

THE HEALING POWER OF BENEFICENCE. 

A helpful energy. Those who wound, and those who 
heal. The tradition of pity on earth. We must 
learn this tradition when we are young. Youth and 
suffering. The consoling power of youth. Be 
good, my child 225-231 



CHAPTER XVII. 

SURSUM CORDA. 

What a man is 2 35~~37 



I. 

HOW TO ACQUIRE FORCE. 



Those who live are those who struggle ; are those 
Whose high resolves fill soul and eyes ; who, urged 
By noble destiny, ascend the slopes, 
Or walk with pensive mien, absorbed in hopes 
Of ends sublime, having before their eyes 
Some holy task or some great love to serve. 

Victor Hugo. 



COURAGE. 



CHAPTER I. 

HOW TO ACQUIRE FORCE. 

THE chief concern of every living creature is 
to live. To live as well, as fully as possible, 
is our primordial instinct, — the eternal spring 
which is hidden beneath all our fleeting aspira- 
tions. It is the motive power which drives the 
world. Everything obeys it : the blade of wheat 
piercing through the earth, and greeting the sun 
for the first time; the little chicken just freed 
from the shell ; the child opening its young soul . 
to the influences of life on every side. It is true 
that man sometimes says that life is an evil, 
and that it would be better if it were not. This 
does not hinder the continuance of life ; this 
does not stop the great invisible impulse which 
makes for existence ; this does not destroy the 



22 . COURAGE. 

germs of the earth, nor the prodigious fecundity 
of the ocean. Life is: this is the chief fact of 
the universe; and the vast majority of beings 
not only accept it, but cling to it with transport 
or despair. 

It is not enough, however, to live. From one 
point of view it is even a matter of indifference : 
the important thing is to live well. The ques- 
tion of living well or badly docs not exist for 
those creatures who are guided by vague in- 
stincts, and who could not do otherwise than 
they do. On the other hand, this question is 
of paramount importance to man. An ant is 
an ant because it was born so; it fulfils its 
function, does its work, and occupies its place. 
It requires something more than to be born to 
become a man. For the man, his birth is but 
the beginning of a long and laborious develop- 
ment; and the development depends in part 
on himself, on the end which he has in view, 
on the enterprises which he undertakes. In 
consequence, there comes a time for each of us 
when it is well for us to consider what ends we 
should pursue, and how we should make use of 
the life we have received. Otherwise we run 



HOW TO ACQUIRE FORCE. 23 

the risk of losing it, or of dissipating it at ran- 
dom; and this cannot be a matter of indiffer- 
ence to any one. In reality, each man gives 
his life and expends his vitality for the thing 
that seems to him worth the while. He should 
be disposed, therefore, to enlighten himself on 
a point so important to him as this : " What is 
the thing which is of greatest value to man?" 
In order to live well, what must one possess 
before everything else? As for me I do not 
hesitate to reply that the most important thing 
to acquire is force ; and that a man needs power 
above all things in order to live. 

One may have bread to eat, amusements, joy, 
— one may possess every advantage of fortune 
and of person : without force one becomes the 
plaything of circumstances, the slave of the 
bread one eats, of the woman one loves, of the 
wealth that one possesses. 

One may have intelligence and penetration, 
profound knowledge of men and things: with- 
out force his learning remains unprofitable, and 
his best idea but an unproductive seed. 

One may have a conscience to distinguish 
subtly between good and evil : without force we 



24 COURAGE. 

leave the world to the wicked, government to 
the unjust, and all our conscience only serves 
to make us sigh over the evils we are powerless 
to attack and to overcome. 

On the other hand, you may be poor, de- 
prived of amusement, disinherited by nature 
and fortune: with force you will transform 
these evils into good, these hardships into 
advantages, these enemies into allies. You 
may have but a limited education and small 
acquaintance with men and things : with force 
you will know how to make use of this rudi- 
mentary knowledge, and you will put into 
practice what little you know; you will ap- 
ply the whole of your earnest life to the reali- 
sation of a few ideas which the curious and 
subtle would have pondered for a morn- 
ing, and then abandoned only to dally with 
others. And, thanks to these few principles 
followed with perseverance, you will make 
your impression like the Macedonian pha- 
lanx, which, though small in number and sim- 
ple in equipment, conquered the immense 
army of the Persians, who were gorgeous but 
pusillanimous. 



HOW TO ACQUIRE FORCE. 25 

If you have a conscience which is dull, but 
on the whole upright, unpractised in subtle 
analysis and showing you every shade of good 
and every refined distortion of evil, but a liv- 
ing, unflinching conscience, — if, in a word, you 
have force and the indomitable persistence of 
those who desire that good should prevail and 
evil disappear, you will become a stronghold of 
justice, and a battering-ram for the fortresses 
of evil. You will become a steady and redoubt- 
able power, which will fly towards its goal like 
a bullet without stopping for anything on its 
way. 

How will it be if you combine intelligence 
and learning, conscience and material resources, 
and place all these at the service of your 
energy? Energy is the queen of the world. 
Even benevolence, love, grace, everything that 
is charming or admirable, is of less value than 
energy. What is languid grace, love without 
courage, a feeble benevolence? Brilliant vices; 
nothing more. 

Energy is the power of powers. When I 
compare it to that which is by the consent of 
many called Force, and which they claim to be 



26 COURAGE. 

a superior principle, I am struck by the absolute 
pre-eminence of energy. 1 

What can force alone do? Can the horns of 
a bull check intelligence? Can the tooth of a 
lion rend the truth? Can prisons fetter liberty? 
Does the mouth of a cannon thunder louder 
than public opinion and the voice of justice? 
No; and just so brute force is of no avail 
against moral force. Where the latter begins 
the other ends. There is only one impregnable 
fortress, and that is a courageous heart. We 
can never fully describe all the radiance that 
shines forth from one solitary act of spiritual 
freedom. Every one who is a man trembles 
at the sight, for he feels that he has come in 
contact with the invisible world. 

The night is black on the ocean ; there are 
no stars, and the compass is wandering from 
the pole. The storm rages, and the sea runs 
high. There seems but chaos and a mighty 

1 M. Comte says, " La Force, proprement elite, e'est ce qui 
regit les actes, sans regler les volontes." If this definition 
be adopted, it would make a distinction between " force " and 
" power." Power extends to volitions as well as to operations, 
to mind as well as matter ; but in English we also speak of 
Force as physical, vital, and mental. 



HOW TO ACQUIRE FORCE. 2J 

conflict of the elements. Now and then a flash 
of lightning reveals for a moment all this wild 
grandeur. What can be greater? 

What can be greater ? 

I will tell you : in the midst of this darkness, 
suspended over these black abysses, an intrepid 
pilot holds the helm. This man is greater than 
the ocean and the tempest. 

Here is a poor old woman, almost infirm. Her 
youth was passed in the midst of ease, even of 
honour. She was surrounded and guarded ; she 
was happy in her family life, and had known 
the happiness of being loved. Life smiled at 
her; but the Fates passed by her and stripped 
her of all. Not only is she poor to-day but 
solitary; more than that, she has been deserted, 
— but she is by no means embittered. She 
rarely speaks of herself. When you ask her to 
confide to you her griefs, she turns the conver- 
sation to inquire after the fate of others. In 
her eyes, dimmed with age, on her wrinkled 
brow, in the clasp of her little thin hand, there 
is such an expression of benevolence that even 
the most unhappy derives some salutary com- 
fort. I do not know exactly what I experience, 



28 COURAGE. 

or why, neither do I know the source from 
which this life draws its strength; but I feel 
certain that in this weakened body, within 
these four bare walls, there dwells a power 
before which all that is usually called great and 
strong in this world fades into insignificance. 
In this instance the courage seems more ex- 
alted than in the sailor of a moment ago, for 
the very reason that, looked at externally, the 
man was stronger than the woman. There is 
a moral courage which shines forth from the 
very absence of all resources of a material 
nature; but no matter what the degree or con- 
ditions, an exhibition of moral force brings us 
into the presence of a power which is not to be 
compared to any other. 

Thank God, the sense of moral grandeur is 
not dead among us ! Among so many fallen 
sovereignties this one at least has remained 
standing in universal esteem. Alas! Why 
should our admiration for it be mingled with 
bitter regrets? We yearn for it as a sick per- 
son yearns for health, an exile for his country. 
A secret sorrow, a poignant homesickness, 
creeps into our adoration. What is most lack- 



HOW TO ACQUIRE FORCE. 29 

ing to our time is the deep and serene calm 
which brings strength to the soul. Favoured 
in so many ways, we are poor and mean in 
character. Our moral fibre seems weakened ; 
and this is the reason why at times our civilised 
society seems to me like one of those beautiful 
ships which science, art, and industry have fitted 
with marvellous machines and sumptuous ar- 
rangements for comfort, but which in the mid- 
dle of the ocean unexpectedly runs out of coal; 
and then the magnificent ship is nothing more 
than a waif, at the mercy of the winds and 
waves. 

Let us, then, before everything lay up a good 
store of motive force. 



II. 

THE VALUE OF LIFE. 



For in Him we live and move and have our betng : as 
certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also 
his offspring. — Acts of the Apostles. 

We walk by faith and not by sight. — Saint Paul. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE VALUE OF LIFE. 

Moral force is not culled idly, like a flower 
from a hedge; it must be acquired laboriously, 
and sometimes must be mined, like coal, from 
the darkest depths. I shall indicate a few of 
the sources whence it springs. 

One of these sources is the elevated ideal one 
forms of life. We are all somewhat indifferent 
about life, because we are so perpetually brought 
in contact with it; it no longer surprises us: 
just as certain mountaineers become insensible 
to the beauty of their native place, as the result 
of having it constantly before their eyes, and 
must leave their country and return to it as 
strangers in order to be struck by its pictur- 
esqueness and grandeur. 

So it becomes necessary for us to rediscover, 
as if it were a novelty, the thing that we seem 
to have known for so long. This is not easy 
3 



34 COURAGE. 

to do. Although the majority of men look 
without seeing, they are not eager that one 
should point out to them what they should 
see. The things about them, and near them, 
leave them cold ; and this disdain for what 
is near is but the reflection of the poor idea 
they have of their own life. Doubtless each 
man has a pride, a foolish pride, in being 
himself rather than some one else; but this 
pride arises from and is nourished by what 
is mediocre in us. The sense of true dignity 
is infinitely rare. 

Proud as we are of our superficial individu- 
ality, we lack that pride which comes from the 
respect one should feel for one's deeper nature; 
and yet this is the sentiment which is the source 
of strength. The man who perceives what he is 
worth is in a much better condition morally 
than one who depreciates himself. 

Who will give us that freshness of impression 
which will enable us to sec all things as if we 
saw them for the first time? Such a one would 
make us feel in contemplating the humblest 
flowers what I might call the bewilderment of 
life. 



THE VALUE OF LIFE. 35 

And this we must have known. We must 
have stood, if only for an instant, on the 
threshold of the infinite, and have received, 
as in a vision, the revelation of all that is 
precious, rich, and unfathomable in every soul, 
and in all human life. Then only can we 
perceive the value of life, and love it and 
cherish it. 

When the young man, in a moment which he 
can never forget, receives the revelation of his 
fatherland, with its history, its griefs and gran- 
deur, some holy change takes place in him. He 
is born again to a new life ; the idea of patriotism 
enters into his heart and ennobles him. From 
that moment he is capable of great deeds and 
of great suffering for the country whose child he 
is. Steeped like steel in a bath which increases 
his strength tenfold, and transformed so that he 
respects himself as he does his flag, he has 
grown to be more than an individual: he has 
become part of a whole. 

An analogous transformation takes place in 
the man who has received the revelation of his 
human dignity. He is baptised anew in the 
fountain of life; he returns to his source; he 



36 COURAGE. 

measures and appreciates how many heroic 
actions, patient sorrows, humble hopes, and 
infinite efforts have gone into this human life 
which he inherits. The soul of centuries has 
passed into his soul. The great hope which 
animated and sustained all this painful develop- 
ment of humanity during unmeasured time has 
breathed upon him. He has met on his path 
the Will which decreed that the world was, and 
that men were, and he has bowed to this Will. 
He comprehends, and this is the very essence 
of faith, that each man is a hope of humanity, 
a hope of God. Henceforth he will no longer 
rely on his own resources alone ; he will have 
behind him all the impulse of the centuries, all 
the succour of eternity. 

Oh, how culpable are those who depreciate 
humanity and vilify man, who take pleasure in 
'rolling him in the mud ! How their foolish pride 
blinds those who talk as if they had counted 
the stars, numbered the sands of the sea, pene- 
trated the secret of life, reached the bottom of 
all things, only to find nothingness! They 
insult the hope that shines on the brow of youth ; 
they extinguish the fire of his regard, and ex- 



THE VALUE OF LIFE. 37 

haust the force of his heart, soil its purity, and 
teach him to despise life. They commit the 
crime of crimes ; they disgust man with his 
destiny when a profound sentiment for this 
destiny is the only thing capable of sustaining 
him, encouraging him and consoling him m 
the midst of its inexplicable hardships, myste- 
ries, and temptations. 

The man who is penetrated with a sense of 
the dignity of life carries this sentiment into 
all the details of his action and experience. 
These details do not seem to him indifferent or 
insignificant; he refers them to the whole. 
When one feels that an apparently insignifi- 
cant action contributes towards the realization 
or hindrance of a great work, one's entire con- 
duct is influenced. And it is an unfailing 
comfort in every difficulty, great or little, to 
know that the humblest effort is bound up 
in the complete work; that nothing and no 
one is forgotten or lost; that there are always 
a thousand reasons for taking courage; and 
that those are the least deceived who are the 
most hopeful. 

I quote here a few lines which were not writ- 



38 COURAGE. 

ten by a believer, but which have a greater 
value as testimony on that account : — 

" Physical ills and moral ills, the sufferings of the 
soul and of the senses, the success of the wicked, the 
humiliation of the just, — all these things would still 
be supportable if one perceived the law and economy 
of them, and divined a providence behind them. 
The believer rejoices in his sores ; he takes pleasure 
in the injustice and violence of his enemies ; even his 
mistakes and crimes do not deprive him of hope. 
But in a world where the light of faith is extinguished, 
evil and suffering lose their significance, and seem to 
be only so many odious jokes and sinister farces. . . . 
There is no other key to the world but faith. And 
this is but too true \ nl 

If one were to ask me to state briefly for him 
the object of human life, I should answer : The 
end of everything is manifest in itself. This end 
is to become all that it can become, in conform- 
ing, with all the power of love, to the eternal 
design which seeks to be fulfilled through it. 
Man is created to become more and more of a 
man, to sustain his life and, — what comes to the 
same thing — to help others to sustain theirs in 
a normal growth. Now, the normal growth de- 
1 Anatole France, Le Temps, February 4, 1893. 



THE VALUE OF LIFE. 39 

mands the development of the whole being — 
physical, intellectual, and moral — in a harmo- 
nious reciprocity. 

Man, then, is created to live on the earth a 
true and just existence, and to combat every- 
thing that stands in the way of this. Human 
affairs find their culminating point in justice, 
which is the supreme harmony. One might say 
that the end of man was to become a power 
that makes for justice. To believe in life is to 
believe that it is a struggle in which the victory 
will belong to justice. It is for us, then, to arm 
ourselves, to fight, and to suffer, if need be, but 
never to lose courage. 

And afterwards? The Afterwards, like the 
Before, belongs to the Will which created life 
and man ; it alone knows the secret of the world ; 
and it must desire that that which is near to us 
should seem more important than that which is 
distant, because our responsibility is greater. 
The path of man is so made that he can see 
distinctly only what is beneath his feet, while 
none the less he must follow the direction that 
leads him to the Beyond. We must not lose 
ourselves in the contemplation of this Beyond, 



40 COURAGE. 

under pain of forgetting to live; nor forget it 
entirely, under pain of forgetting why we live. 
Man has need 

" To realise, in striving, that his mortal toil 
Into the infinite is borne ; that there it stands, 
While with the present hour eternity clasps hands." 

Conclusion. Do what you should, what your 
higher interest and that of others requires that 
you should do, and then be content, and confide 
yourself to Him who knows why the worlds 
revolve ! The fundamental dogma is belief in 
life ; the supreme heresy is a lack of hope. 



III. 

OBEDIENCE. 



Travellers, go say to Sparta that we died here in obe- 
dience to her holy laws. — I)iscription at Ther?nopylo3. 

It is dangerous to act contrary to your own conscience. 
. . . Here I am. I cannot do otherwise. May God help 
me ! —Luther, at the Diet of Worms. 

A democracy whose citizens possessed not manly char- 
acters and robust bodies would be condemned to obscure 
decay and shameful eclipse ; but a democracy in which 
the license of unbridled wills threatened to disturb the 
social harmony and the established order of law, would 
be exposed to fatal outbreaks of violence and to disrup- 
tion by anarchy. — P. Poincarre, Minister of Public 
Instruction. 



CHAPTER III. 

OBEDIENCE. 

THE first requisite to the realisation of the 
object of life is obedience. I know that this 
word is understood by few: almost every one 
regards it as the name of an enemy. It is 
especially repugnant to young ears ; and many 
think that it is more hated at the present time 
than by preceding generations. It seems that 
no one will obey nowadays, either at home, or 
at school, or in the army, or in the atelier, or 
anywhere. It may be that a certain flagrant 
indocility makes us appear more opposed to 
obedience than our ancestors. At bottom, how- 
ever, I believe that we are brought face to face 
with a permanent contrariety of human nature, 
a contrariety which is but the caricature of a 
legitimate instinct, — the instinct of liberty. 
There is innate in us an obstinate tendency to 
be ourselves, and to guard ourselves from 



44 COURAGE. 

exterior influences. Servitude seems to us the 
lowest of ignominies, and we confound obedi- 
ence with servitude. To obey, we think, is 
to capitulate and degrade ourselves. I have 
never been able to see children who would 
let their hard little heads be pulverised rather 
than bend them beneath a yoke without an 
emotion of secret pride. Their case is very 
serious, doubtless, but when one examines it 
carefully it may appear in another light. Often 
they are but misled, and arc defending them- 
selves against their friends, and resisting 
their saviours. They think that they must 
guard their moral integrity, and, in fact, it is 
owing to this noble sentiment that so many 
resources are often found in these obstinate 
heads if one succeeds in enlightening them. 
One who, while young, would allow himself 
to be flayed rather than yield, can become a 
power for good on reaching maturity. I am 
not pleading here the cause of the obstinate 
and presumptuous, who know better than their 
masters or parents, and with whom it is a de- 
testable point of honour never to accept advice 
from any one ; but I wish to encourage a feeling 



OBEDIENCE. 45 

of hope on the score of certain misunderstood 
young persons who excite great anxieties. 

After which I maintain as a principle that the 
only way to escape servitude is through obedi- 
ence, and that there is no purer source of 
strength. Obedience is the indispensable con- 
dition of a good life and liberty; in a certain 
sense one might say that obedience is liberty. 
I shall try to explain. 

In everything there is an eternal law which it 
is important to discover, and to which we must 
conform. Outside of this law there are only 
anomalies, accidents, and destruction. There 
are laws according to which one drives a car- 
riage, laws for the cultivation of plants, laws 
for the revolution of the planets, laws for the 
development of human life. He who does not 
know them, and will not conform to them, 
renders himself liable to the most painful les- 
sons and to the most fatal errors. These laws 
are as yet only known in part. One of the 
great labours of humanity is to discover them ; 
and the one among us who, by his activity and 
perseverance, has succeeded in discovering 
some one of them is justly considered a bene- 



46 COURAGE. 

factor. All the experiences of the past, often 
hard ones, constitute for us a treasure which 
we could not have gained by our own exertions 
alone. It is given to no man to live his life as 
if he were the first man; consequently at the 
beginning of life we receive from the hands of 
others the rules of conduct to which we must 
conform. This is an advantage for us rather 
than ill treatment. There is no danger to our 
dignity in following the rule tested by so many 
generations, or in avowing openly that we are 
less wise than all of our ancestors combined. 
Docility and obedience, then, are excellent con- 
ditions under which to acquire the wisdom 
humanity has to teach us, and excellent allies 
with which to reinforce our personal experi- 
ence. The man who misunderstands the part 
which tradition plays in his development makes 
the most stupid mistake, and deprives himself 
by his own act of the most valuable aid. This 
need not prevent each individual and each new 
generation from examining into the patrimony 
left him by his ancestors. On the contrary, 
the only way to value this legacy justly, and 
to make use of what is good in it, is to receive 
it with deference. 



OBEDIENCE. 47 

Obedience is not only the means of augment- 
ing our strength by all the aid of the past, but 
it is a still better means of helping us in general 
to apprehend law, — law which governs indi- 
vidual will and caprice. It is the source of all 
order. Between law and fantasy there can be 
no compromise; we must choose one or the 
other. He who does not obey law gives him- 
self up to caprice. To make my meaning 
plainer, I will compare the individual will, which 
governs itself according to law, to the needle 
which turns to the north, and the will governed 
by caprice to the weather-cock. The man 
without law is the plaything of his impulses, his 
desires, his passions. The pilot would imperil 
his vessel, life, and goods in steering by the 
weather-vane, while he will brave all the forces 
of the winds and waves in order the better to 
follow the route indicated by the .compass. 

Which is freer, he who allows himself to be 
tossed hither and thither by the waves, or he, 
who with them or against them, if need be, 
holds his steadfast way towards the goal? 

There are many men, however, who mistake 
the most obvious slavery for liberty, and whose 



48 COURAGE. 

independence consists in following their desires. 
This error is even so universal that it hinders 
the majority of men from seeing clearly into 
their own conduct. 

There is but one path of safety through life, 
and that is the one marked out by law. At 
the beginning of life, law is exterior to us ; we 
are taught it. Sometimes it hurts us, and we 
revolt; but he who can endure these first 
shocks through the help of obedience has 
served part of his apprenticeship to liberty. 
He learns at first to conform to the exterior 
law, and finally through experience he learns 
that this law has its foundation within him- 
self, and that when he thought he was submit- 
ting to others, he was but obeying the dictates 
of his inmost being. 

Once in possession of this inward guidance, 
he becomes emancipated from all external com- 
mandment, and from all human tutelage. He 
was a child; he has become a man, a free man, 
and master of himself. Liberty consists in con- 
forming your will to the law which is at the 
foundation of everything. All who know not an 
inward law, august and inflexible, raised above 



OBEDIENCE. 



49 



all the caprices of the individual or of the 
masses, are ripe for servitude. Obedience, then, 
is liberty. 



* * 



What has just been said shows sufficiently 
what kind of obedience I would recommend. 
It is necessary, however, to attack and destroy 
one kind of obedience which is an unworthy 
caricature of the other. I wish to speak of 
that obedience which consists in placing one's 
intelligence and conscience in the hands of 
another, and becoming a passive instrument. 
No one has the right either to demand or ac- 
cord this obedience; it is a crime. We know 
it, moreover, by its fruits. In the place of en- 
couraging and fortifying one's initiative powers, 
it stifles them; instead of forming the con- 
science, it deforms it. It destroys the indi- 
viduality, ruins the character, and renders the 
man incapable of governing himself. This 
obedience is not the mother of liberty, but of 
servitude, the great purveyor of spiritual death. 
It takes the place of the inward law. It is this 
obedience which has fostered in the world the 

4 



50 COURAGE. 

struggle against personal dignity and conscience 
in requiring men to submit despite the protes- 
tations of their reason and the legitimate re- 
volt of their heart. 

Whether this authority be shown in the gov- 
ernment, or the church, or the home, it must 
be resisted. Like disorder and anarchy, from 
which, however, it pretends that it can rescue 
us, it is the enemy of all morality. The apos- 
tles of disorder, and those of blind obedience, 
despite their superficial differences, have much 
in common, and can be recognised by the same 
signs. They say, "We are the law;" and 
from this fatal confusion have arisen innumer- 
able evils for society. We can never say with 
too much insistence, " No, the law is no one 
person." Law is not the caprice of an indi- 
vidual, nor yet of a government, whether it be 
invested in one person or many. The law is 
as far above constituted bodies as above iso- 
lated individuals. We must obey it alone, and 
no one has the right to command if he be not 
the interpreter and servitor of the law. And 
if obedience to the law is identical with that 
to the conscience, it is because the conscience, 



OBEDIENCE. 5 1 

like the law, is impersonal. It is the most 
intimate part of man, while, at the same time, 
it is the part most independent of him. 

It is a deplorable error, or else an interested 
deception, to pretend that respect for the indi- 
vidual conscience leads to social disruption, and 
to the fanatic reign of personal desire. A man 
of conscience is not a force delivered over to 
the hap-hazard sway of his caprices: he is a 
force under control, but not controlled by the 
hand of man nor against his will. He has 
voluntarily submitted to the eternal law. 

I know I am touching here on one of the 
points of ceaseless contention, but we must not 
weary of returning to it. Our life depends on 
the way in which we understand and practise 
obedience. Do not let us be deterred, there- 
fore, in our line of conduct, either by the apos- 
tles of disorder who cry out against tyranny 
whenever obedience is mentioned, or by the 
upholders of authority to whom the idea of 
free obedience is nonsense. To those who are 
sincerely seeking the way, I should say: 

Take ten men of whom each one wishes to 
command and none to obey. Take ten who 



52 COURAGE. 

will blindly obey a chief. Take ten who obey 
through conviction. In no matter what action 
or struggle, the first ten will exhibit this infe- 
riority, that their efforts will not be concerted. 
The second ten will act in concert, but they 
will be like so many inert forces held together 
by an exterior bond, and guided by an outside 
force ; enthusiasm will be lacking. The last 
ten will act together, and with enthusiasm ; they 
will march to their end like one mass, but a 
living mass, carried along not by the exercise 
of any exterior will, but by the innate action 
of all their wills combined, and by their united 
determination. Between these ten men and 
the others no comparison is possible. Their 
strength has not its equal in the world. 

# 

Having said this, no one can misinterpret my 
intentions in what follows: Obedience is the 
proclamation by the individual of the great fact 
of solidarity. To refuse to obey is to withdraw 
from the whole, to proclaim oneself superior to 
the organism, or to form within it a foreign 
clement. There is no more serious schism than 



OBEDIENCE. 



53 



this ; in reality the effort is vain. Absolute dis- 
obedience would be an entire disruption of the 
bonds which unite humanity ; it would be suicidal. 
For him who places himself without the pale of 
humanity, nothing remains but annihilation. 

Obedience, on the contrary, is the voluntary 
avowal of the dependence of the individual upon 
society; it procures for him all the strength of 
union. The more absolute this obedience is, 
the more admirable it is. 

There are times when, through reason and 
conscience, a man should consent to become a 
mere autqniatic subaltern and obey the com- 
mand; but this is not. reducing oneself to a 
machine. It is practising solidarity; it is real- 
ising that there is something greater than the 
great, which is worthy of every abnegation 
and self-sacrifice. There is a humble and ob- 
scure courage which is more difficult and of 
more value than the most brilliant exhibitions 
of personal valour, and this courage consists in 
effacing oneself. Among all kinds of energy 
this virtue succeeds in binding men together; 
it unites the members of a society as cement 
holds together the stones of a wall, and makes 
it one compact mass. By means of it, the in- 



54 COURAGE. 

dividual becomes the community; not the 
stupid crowd that follows a master like a flock 
of sheep, but a disciplined army which has one 
soul, and which can, according to the occasion, 
resist like a rock, or advance like a torrent. 
The highest manifestation of life has always 
consisted in association governed by rules, and 
grounded on voluntary obedience ; the best of 
those who have lived on earth have been those 
also who have understood to its full extent the 
happiness of losing themselves in the life of 
others, and in mingling their souls with the 
soul of the harmonious throng. 

In the face of this demonstration of the all- 
powerful virtue of obedience, what becomes of 
the spirit of insubordination wherein each one 
disputes the password, criticises the law, and 
makes himself chief ? What is attained by 
the exhibition of its impotence, its sterility, its 
incapacity to make ten men walk abreast, but 
a reductio ad absurdum, furnishing us with the 
proof that there is no safety but in obedience, 
however much it may displease those who hate 
the word ! I fear for a young man who does 
not obey his superiors, who cannot unite with 
his equals for some common action, who will 



OBEDIENCE. 



55 



not march in the ranks, conform to a rule, and 
bear the yoke with that inward pride which is 
the sign of a courageous heart. 



* 
* * 



The school of obedience is a good source 
from which to draw another kind of courage. 
This is no longer the courage of combat, nor of 
individual or collective effort, but it is that more 
difficult kind, of endurance and resignation. 

It is necessary that man should accustom him- 
self early to what is disagreeable. If he does 
not learn this, little by little, in the encounters of 
his will with wills that are stronger, and against 
which it is vain to strive, life, alas ! will teach 
it to him and perhaps so suddenly that the 
lesson may crush him. Resignation is one of 
the forces of suffering humanity. Let us lay up 
a supply of it in the morning of life, when we 
have least need of it. We know that stores 
must be laid up before they are needed. In 
winter it is too late to fill the barn, and a gen- 
eral must not wait to exercise his troops till 
the moment when the enemy appears. 



IV. 

SIMPLICITY. 



By two wings a man is lifted up from things earthly ; 
namely, by Simplicity and Purity. — Iniitatio7i of Jesus 
Christ. 

Do not despise your condition in life ; for therein you 
must act, suffer, and conquer. — H. J. Amiel. 



CHAPTER IV. 

SIMPLICITY. 

HAVE you ambition? No? Well, then, ac- 
quire it ! But let me tell you what kind, for 
all kinds are not good. First, I am going to 
risk astonishing and repelling you by describ- 
ing a vulgar ambition. Very old men have 
told me that it was good to shake young 
trees. 

For the majority of men, the object of their 
ambition is to rise ; to rise, to become other 
than they are, to get away from their surround- 
ings, to uproot themselves from their native 
soil ; to rise, to be greater than those who sur- 
round them, to overtop them by a head, by a 
cubit or more if possible; to be distinguished, 
not to be like everybody else; to eat, dress, 
speak differently from others; to make them- 
selves conspicuous, in fact, if only by a badge, 
a stripe, a bit of ribbon. This begins in the 



60 COURAGE. 

class-room, where the object is to be first, and 
continues through life. It is absurd. 

Of what good is it to rise, to be first, to be 
richer, to be more conspicuous by your dress, 
or your badges, if the human individual envel- 
oped in these brilliant trappings is of no value 
in itself? Ambitious persons sacrifice reality 
to appearance. The more they are puffed up 
the more hollow and empty they are. I see 
them generally oblivious of their beginning, 
ashamed of their original poverty, of the 
humble occupation which they first engaged 
in. Many of them hide their origin, and do 
not like to have their parents spoken of be- 
cause they were simple people of obscure con- 
dition. They have the souls of deserters. If 
it be their ambition which has bred these senti- 
ments, this is enough to condemn it. Their 
ambition is puerile, foolish," vain, superficial, 
and above all inhuman. 

Is it humane for one's happiness to consist 
in rising above another man and humiliating 
him, perhaps crushing him beneath one's feet ? 
Is it humane to attach a value to what one 
possesses only when one is the sole possessor? 



SIMPLICITY. 6 1 

What is this manner of man who so closely 
resembles the wolf? In this way one comes 
finally to regard life itself as a quarry whence 
to snatch the largest piece of meat after fight- 
ing tooth and nail. The strongest and the 
most courageous is he who can fight best and 
get most for himself; and after he has worked 
hard, that is, conquered and bled his neigh- 
bours, he is proclaimed chief, and the others 
envy him. They would like to be in his 
place. 

Is this the strength and greatness of man? Fie, 
then ! In that case I do not wish to be great. 
The competition, the prizes, the competitors, 
and their methods, are all equally repugnant 
to me. If to kill and devour one another for 
the sake of riches, power, and distinction, be 
human life, I would rather be the first to be 
eaten than continue to gaze at such a spectacle. 

But there is another life. I would hold it up 
to you as the object of your ambition ; its 
dominant quality is simplicity. It develops 
generosity and courage to the same extent as 
the first begets cowardice and meanness. 

This simplicity consists in the lack of show in 



62 COURAGE. 

one's external existence. It results from the 
conviction that true grandeur lies within the man. 
To become better, more just, stronger, — this 
is the only progress to which he can aspire. 
He who knows this remains simple. The idea 
of dominating or crushing others does not 
occur to him, because he knows that there is 
no surer way of debasing himself. 

He is persuaded that the best science is the 
knowledge of how to live well. To live well is 
difficult everywhere, and everywhere meritorious. 
Just as a painting representing a goose girl, a 
beggar, or a cripple, may have the same artistic 
value as one representing a Madonna, a hero, or 
a beautiful woman, so the noble life of a wood- 
cutter or a street-sweeper may have an equal 
moral value with the noble life of a sage or a 
statesman. The social condition is of little 
importance: at every round of the ladder it 
is possible to set before oneself human dignity 
and moral grandeur as one's aim ; at every 
round of the ladder it will be found, on careful 
investigation, that the distance to be traversed 
is the same. The value of a piece of money 
depends on the metal in it; the value of a 



SIMPLICITY. 63 

man depends on the worth of the substance 
which makes up his moral being. 

The man whose moral fibre is firm and fine 
will be what he ought to be, whatever his sta- 
tion, and he will think less of changing this 
than of fulfilling his duties. According to the 
occasion he will know how to command with- 
out pride, or obey without servility. The same 
qualities are requisite to make a good master 
and a good servant, a good chief and a good 
soldier. Before everything else they are men, 
and they know the significance of the word. 
He who does not feel this is a nonentity every- 
where, and he who realises it is everywhere the 
equal of every one. 

This is what I call the simplicity of the heart 
whence springs the simplicity of life, of taste, 
of manners. This simplicity is also the highest 
dignity, the most genuine nobility, the greatest 
force. 

A simple man does not wish to rise by 
cutting himself off from his stock, to isolate 
himself by seeking to escape from the common 
law. He knows too well that he draws his 
strength from his roots. He remains forever 



64 COURAGE. 

in contact with the healthy, broad earth whence 
we all are sprung, with life that is normal and 
not complicated. 

He does not refine his table or his furniture, 
his language or his ideas. If it has been given 
to him to rise a few degrees, he glories rather 
in his origin than in what he has acquired. In 
heart he remains always with the lowly. He 
does not forget; he is loyal, and keeps in touch 
with them. 

You may be sure that somewhere in his house 
there is a corner where he guards the cherished 
souvenirs of his past, and that he preserves cer- 
tain patriarchal customs which nothing could 
make him renounce. Hence his strength, his 
health, his happipess, — the secret of his as- 
cendancy over others. 

When he commands he is sure to be obeyed, 
for he possesses the charm ; and if he requires 
the accomplishment of something difficult, his 
subordinates know that it is not because he is 
ignorant of the difficulty and effort which it 
will cost, but because he has achieved it him- 
self, and could do so again. 

Nothing makes a man greater than this in j 



SIMPLICITY. 65 

nate nobility under a simple aspect. It will be 
to the eternal honour of great democracies that 
they have furnished numerous examples of such 
admirable lives ; and the truth which such lives 
proclaim is so manifest that even in societies 
founded on absolutism, where external appear- 
ance counts for much more, there has never 
been any lasting dominion, personal influence, 
or power over men's souls, without the presence 
of this simplicity. 

All really great characters have remained sim- 
ple in some direction. Is it not better worth the 
while to strive for these heights than to be car- 
ried along the beaten track where the multitudes 
swarm? 

The dangers which are to be encountered 
along the path of ordinary ambition are the 
same for all. No class of society is exempt; 
for it is not enough to be of humble station to 
love simplicity, and one may belong to the 
higher classes without rejoicing in luxury. The 
important thing is the spirit. I know some 
very rich people who are exceedingly simple, 
and by no means pleasure-loving or proud, and 
I know some poor people who dream of noth- 
5 



66 COURAGE. 

ing but grandeur, an easy life and amusements. 
Great is their disdain of simplicity; they have 
a horror of it. Their hatred of work is pas- 
sionate, and what displeases them in the life of 
their more fortunate neighbours is that they 
cannot change places with them. To accom- 
plish this they would do anything. Woe to 
him who is possessed by the ideal of an effemi- 
nate and enervating existence which is to con- 
sist only in strange sights, disturbing sensa- 
tions and excitement ! Moral gangrene has set 
in, and will devour him slowly, undermining all 
the living forces that arc in him. Before long 
he will confound the good with well-being, and 
will come to look upon all privation and effort 
as a disgrace. From this to selling himself for 
small riches is but a step. A race of slaves 
are these frantic runners, chasing after For- 
tune's chariot to pick up the crumbs which fall 
from it. It is of little consequence whence 
they spring, what their names are, what theii 
ranks, opinions, beliefs. There is one expres- 
sion which describes them all : they are the 
dregs of humanity. 



v. 

THE INWARD WATCH. 



Keep thy heart with all diligence ; for out of it are the 
issues of life. — Proverbs. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE INWARD WATCH. 

VIGILANCE is one of the most interesting 
functions of civilised society. It is organised 
wherever there is any property to guard ; for 
everything that exists has its enemies, and to 
secure its safety we must be ever on the alert. 
Round the universe the sentinel watches, and 
we hear constantly warnings and cries of alarm. 
Those who sleep are disarmed, unprotected; 
they fall a prey. 

However little we may know ourselves, we 
know our enemies. Every one of us has them. 
The enemies of which I speak are all those 
causes of weakness and abasement which hinder 
us from being what we ought to be, and from 
fulfilling the object of our lives. In time of war 
the gravest danger is to have men in the ranks 
or the forts who sympathise with the enemy. 

I do not hesitate to say that this critical situa- 
tion exists for every man, and that our constant 



JO COURAGE. 

peril arises from the fact that the enemy has 
spies within the place. Each man has within 
him a power that can destroy him. Without 
the inward watch the best will be lost. I am 
not one of those who cry out in alarm at every 
moment. By dint of saying, " Take care ! " 
these perpetual alarmists destroy your confi- 
dence; but blindness and false assurance differ 
from confidence. Confidence is a great good ; 
false assurance is one form of cowardice. Vi- 
rility exacts that a man should take account 
of danger, should face it, and take measures 
against it. 

Heredity, predisposition, and circumstances, 
which are so many sources of weakness, engen- 
der different tendencies and defects, according 
to the individual. The friction which these 
defects cause in our development is felt through 
our whole system. It is only necessary for one 
vicious habit to become established and expand 
in order to throw the whole mind out of balance. 
Then efforts, qualities, even virtues, are neutra- 
lised. There is a terrible fatality in evil. A 
man has no need to have all the vices combined, 
and to be lacking in every virtue, to lose his 



THE INWARD WATCH. 71 

equilibrium, and founder. There are no water- 
tight compartments in the inward life. 

It is the great grief of every man who loves 
the good to feel within himself the possibility 
of evil. To love all that is noblest and best 
in life, to be ready to struggle and suffer for 
justice, and yet to see that, under certain cir- 
cumstances, one would be capable of actions 
destructive of all one loved ; to understand that 
it is possible to demolish, and that often only 
too quickly, all that one has spent years and 
much generous enthusiasm in building up ; to 
condemn sincerely, and without a shadow of 
hypocrisy, certain ways of living, talking, and 
acting, and to be guilty of them oneself at other 
moments ; to be the same man who detests the 
thing and does it; to find oneself in the posi- 
tion of condemning and hating oneself; to have 
to struggle against oneself, — this is indeed a 
difficult situation ! How well we understand 
Saint Paul when he cries : " For the good that 
I would, I do not; but the evil which I would 
not, that I do." 

And yet this is inevitable. No character was 
ever formed except by this internal warfare and 



72 COURAGE. 

in the midst of these battles of the soul. The best 
are those who suffer the most; their pure eyes 
see with greater clearness the contrast between 
what they are and what they ought to be. But 
if the elect of mankind are thus tried, shaken, 
cast amidst these gloomy struggles, and obliged 
to hold themselves armed in the breach, the 
necessity of vigilance becomes the more evident 
for us ordinary mortals. I should say to every 
young man entering life, " Keep watch on your- 
self, know yourself, and distrust yourself." May 
the step of the guardian who wakes resound, 
night and day, about the citadel of your life ! 
And may this guardian not be like those dogs 
who neither bark nor bite, and who are silent 
for certain privileged persons. May this guard 
be incorruptible, and, if need be, cry to you, 
as the famous soldier to the Little Corporal, 
" You cannot pass ! " 

In order to increase our vigilance it is neces- 
sary to sharpen our sense of responsibility. 
Let us often try to picture to ourselves all the 
suffering and hope which is bound up in each 
of our lives, and let us say to ourselves that it 



THE INWARD WATCH. 73 

depends on us whether this suffering and hope 
be lost or not. If our own interest is not suffi- 
cient to make us careful, let us think of the 
interest of others. If we can say to ourselves 
that in remaining at our post, in being true, 
just, honest, pure, in returning good for evil, in 
drying tears, in arousing the discouraged, we 
do good, and that in neglecting our duties, on 
the contrary, we work for the ruin, the anguish, 
the perdition of others, — what reasons have 
we to watch ! Everything that is confided to 
our hands is at stake ! These are considerations 
which ought to be capable of taking hold of us, 
and of keeping us in that attentive and resolute 
condition of mind which we call alert. We 
tremble and we feel courageous at the same 
time. It gives to us that indelible sign of 
dignity which we see in the soldier who is on 
guard. 

Why shrink from responsibility? Can we 
buy this great honour at too dear a price? Let 
him who is afraid listen to this : Do you know 
what degradation means to a soldier? It is to 
see his rank, his decorations, his epaulettes, 
torn from him ; to see these signs of his former 



74 COURAGE. 

value thrown at his feet! What is death in 
comparison with this dishonour? It is true that 
in the future this unfortunate soldier can sleep; 
he will never again mount guard ; he will no 
longer cry, " To arms ; here is the enemy ! " 
he will never again make an assault nor hear 
the bullets whistling round him ; he will have 
no more responsibility. — Very well ; to declare 
that a man is irresponsible is to degrade him ! 
Death were better. 

The practice of vigilance creates in a man 
the habit of a conscious life, and the need of 
reviewing his deeds before his conscience. To 
be able to respect himself and remain in accord 
with this inner judge is his supreme desire; his 
greatest fear is to be chastised and branded by 
this same judge. In this fact lies the secret of 
all morality. The difference between a good 
man and one who is not, is simple: the first is 
a man of conscience, the second is a man who 
lives for the gallery. For the second, it is 
of little consequence whether the judge within 
him condemns him or acquits him; it has been 
long since he consulted him. His judge is the 
public; he watches himself only when it is 



THE INWARD WATCH 75 

looking at him. As soon as he is alone, he is 
conscious of no restraint, no law. What disdain 
a man who lives for the gallery must have for 
himself! This perpetual actor attaches a greater 
value to the judgment of the least of his spec- 
tators than to his own judgment, and the man 
whom he esteems the least in the world is 
himself. When he is alone, he thinks that there 
is no one there; and he does not see, poor 
man, that it is as if he said, " I or no one, — it 
is all the same thing." Alas ! from a certain 
point of view he is right; for of what value in 
the moral world is a creature who is capable of 
everything, provided that no one sees him ? 

W 7 e cannot be reminded too often of the 
necessity of an inward life. Two of the condi- 
tions of its development are meditation and 
solitude. When the noise of the world is 
stilled, and the dust of the human conflict is 
dissipated, the inward voice awakes, and the 
eyes of the soul discern all things more clearly. 
We must often retire into solitude, the more 
so as we are only alone there in appearance ; 
for it is there that we encounter those whom I 
shall call our invisible allies : our comforting 



J6 COURAGE. 

memories, and those loved figures who encour- 
age and sustain us. 

Above all, we shall there indulge in prayer 
if we have the good fortune to know the value 
of it. When a man prays, he communes with 
his source ; he rests from the flux of the world 
in the beneficent calm of the eternal ; he restores 
and purifies himself; and perhaps he will never 
realise more clearly that he is not alone than in 
this solitude. Prayer is the sanctified retreat 
of the soul, the peaceful and elevated fortress 
which nothing can attack, where he leaves be- 
hind him all his sufferings, all his struggles, all 
dangers; where he takes refuge in absolute 
security. O Prayer, what source of strength 
can be compared to thee, and how can a sol- 
dier mount guard with greater courage than 
when he feels himself guarded by Him who 
watches always ! 



I cannot stop here without adding a few 
words for the vanquished. Who has never been 
conquered? Who has never stumbled? Who 
has never fallen? Oh, the lost battles, the 
morrows of defeats, the frightful awakenings 



THE INWARD WATCH. 77 

after a mistaken sense of security ! Never scoff 
at a dead man, even though his death was due 
to a lack of vigilance ! How do you know how 
you will die? Never despair of those who fall, 
beaten and wounded, but who still live ! This 
is the time to run to their succour, to raise 
them, to bind them, to care for them. Every 
moral fall is frequently as much the result of 
accident as of mistake ; and even if there has 
been error, this error points out the path of 
duty to those who remain standing, just as the 
weakness of the feeble creates duties for the 
strong. The best men have felt and propa- 
gated a sentiment of tenderness for those who 
have been vanquished in their moral struggles ; 
perhaps the memory of their own defeats have 
made them more indulgent for those of others. 
In the life of each person there come critical 
periods, sometimes veritable moral maladies. 
One is not the same person as in days of 
health; weakened, wounded, they have need, 
above all, of intelligent care. Youth, especially, 
is subject to these perilous crises when every- 
thing depends on the treatment. He who now 
walks with a firm step can tell you that at cer- 
tain moments on the way little was needed to 



?S COURAGE. 

send him astray forever. This is, then, the 
place to recognise that pardon and clemency 
are powers of the first order. In this world, 
so full of suffering, struggles, and vicissitudes, 
man aspires after goodness as after a source of 
life, fie who does not knew how to pardon, 
and who does not recognise that he himself 
often has need of it, is either a hypocrite or 
possesses a hard heart. It was not in vain that 
the Just among the just, the Great Captain who 
struggled so valiantly against iniquity, and 
dealt such formidable blows to the wicked, in- 
sisted so strongly on pardon, and showed so 
much pity to the fallen. 

Let us conclude, then : the pass-word is, " Be 
Vigilant! " If, in spite of all, an accident over- 
takes you, or even some serious disaster, let 
there be no panic, no useless regrets. Pick 
yourself up, reorganise your resources, cover 
your retreat, in order that the lost battle may 
not be turned into a rout. The best armies 
are those that do not become demoralised by 
defeat. For the man who knows how to profit 
by the lesson, to have been vanquished is oft- 
times a source of strength. 



VI. 
HEROIC EDUCATION. 



I am not to be pitied, Monseigneur ; I die in the per- 
formance of my duty. It is you who are to be pitied, 
you who are in arms against your prince, your country, 
your vows. — Bayard's dying response to the Connetable 
de Bourbon. 

Happy are the nations whose sacred sources of enthu- 
siasm are not exhausted. — L. Enault. 



CHAPTER VI. 

HEROIC EDUCATION. 

THE old stoics had this saying among them- 
selves, Nihil mirari, — " Do not be aston- 
ished at anything." The sense of it is plain; 
it means that we must not allow ourselves to be 
overawed by men or things, to be frightened or 
disconcerted. A man should retain his self- 
possession, and be master of himself, amid all 
the impressions that he receives. This is. cer- 
tainly a good rule. It is in happy contrast 
with the fickleness of our moods and the neurotic 
tendencies of the times. Such a maxim is like 
a soothing and refreshing bath ; after it, one's 
eyes are clearer, one's arms stronger, one's step 
more alert. Let us often repeat to ourselves 
this old saying which has reassured and sus- 
tained the courage of so many, and which ful- 
filled, for those whose device it was, the office 
of a sure and steadfast friend, who took them 
6 



82 COURAGE. 

by the hand in the hour of trouble, and said, 
"Be calm, have courage, be wise, and all will 
come out right ! " 

There is another way of translating the adage 
against which I wish to protest, precisely be- 
cause it is so common. Our contemporaries 
adopt the Nihil mirari, but they translate it, 
" Let us admire nothing." If those who con- 
form to the rule thus modified were old men, 
I should not permit myself to attack them. I 
should say to myself, "They are tired of life; 
to their old organs everything seems old ; they 
have lost the faculty of admiring, as they have 
lost their sense of hearing, or the capacity to 
sleep, or the appetite of twenty." Such is not 
the case, however. Those who undertake to 
admire nothing are young men. To admire 
anything seems to them humiliating. It is all 
very well for children to open their eyes wide 
and stare at men and things with that serious 
and surprised air, which shows that they be- 
lieve what they see. One must leave that kind 
of emotion in the nursery,, with one's petticoats, 
one's last doll, and all the forgotten toys of 
one's tender years. A man must not admire 



HEROIC EDUCATION. . 83 

anything. Nothing should surprise or excite 
him. To admire is to be a dupe, to let one- 
self be taken in. A serious young man should 
not put himself in the ridiculous position of* 
" swallowing " anything. To be able to say 
solemnly, in every situation : " Oh, I know that ; 
that's an old story; " to be tired of everything 
before having experienced anything, — this is 
the pose of your young man. Among his com- 
rades he who admires the least passes for the 
strongest-minded, and is almost sure to be the 
most admired ; for if it be a servile attitude of 
mind to feel admiration, to be admired is one 
of the noblest delights of life. Thus a spirit has 
spread among youth, and in the schools and 
ateliers, whose ideal is to have no ideal. From 
this to respecting nothing and no one is but 
a step. 

This spirit of belittling and scoffing is the 
order of the day; and one of the manifesta- 
tions of this unfortunate tendency is that we 
meet together more willingly to cry down a 
thing than to honour an illustrious memory, 
or to do homage to a great citizen. To my 
mind, one of the worst misfortunes that can 



84 COURA' 

happen to you when you are young is to be 
inoculated with this spirit of which I speak. If 
there be anything which is not young, it is this 
spirit. To feel respect shows the quality of a 
young man, as the bouquet of the wine shows 
from which province it came. Thus, wherever 
I discover an absence of respect, I say to my- 
self, "That smells of vinegar." We must get 
rid of this tendency. It is a source of weak- 
ness, of decrepitude. It is an enemy, and one 
of the most dangerous. 

We live through respect, and we perish 
through scoffing. Plato banished musicians 
from his republic because he wrongly believed 
that music enervated man's courage. As for 
me, I declare war against this spirit of mockery; 
I wish that it might be hunted down, and exter- 
minated, like those parasites which are nour- 
ished in our marrow and blood. Let us chase 
the scoffer; and, on the other hand, let us 
cherish admiration, respect, and enthusiasm in 
all their forms, as among the elements of a 
healthy morality, and the source of strong 
wills. All that I have to say on this subject 
I shall try to say under the heading of Heroic 
Education. 



HEROIC EDUCATION. 85 

What is a hero? He is a man of larger stature 
than his fellows, who has lived an intenser and 
wider human life than the majority; a being 
who concentrates in his mind and heart the 
aspirations of a whole epoch, and gives them 
powerful expression; or it may be that he is a 
man who appears above the crowd to accom- 
plish one deed, but one so great, so fine, that it 
immortalises him. 

When we study the history of humanity, we 
see heroes appearing at the beginning of every 
great movement. Their example is contagious ; 
some virtue emanates from them and takes 
possession of others. It is their privilege to 
arouse enthusiasm, hope, and light. They are 
the saviours of hopeless times, the guides in 
dark days, the pioneers of the future, the pure 
and noble victims who die for justice and truth, 
in order to pave the way for them. But what 
influence would they have without the respect, 
admiration, and enthusiasm which they excite 
in us? It is by dint of admiring them that we 
become capable of profiting by their virtues. 
What is true of the hero, is true of everything 
that is heroic, to no matter what degree. Every- 



86 COURAGE. 

thing that is great, everything that is beautiful, 
everything that is pure and sacred, penetrates 
to our hearts through our respect and admira- 
tion. These are the senses by which \vc per- 
ceive the high realities of the soul. 

Man understands an example better than a 
maxim, and apprehends the good in action more 
easily than in theory. He needs to be taught 
how to walk. It is for this reason that, when 
young, he naturally seeks some one to imitate. 
We always follow a leader, and, whether we 
wish it or not, we are always disciples of some 
chief. The proof of this is to be found in the 
fact that those who exalt a lack of respect to 
the height of a principle, form a school, and run 
the risk themselves of saying, " Dear master " 
to him who is leader of it. Another proof is 
that a drawing or a newspaper article, describing 
and recounting a crime, and the circumstances 
surrounding it, becomes, in minds prepared for 
it, a suggestion for similar crimes. Shameful 
actions, above all, when they have been com- 
mitted by prominent persons, act on the public 
mind like evil forces; they become for thou- 
sands of creatures an influence for depravity. 



HEROIC EDUCATION. g? 

Does it not seem as if, at certain times, a breath 
of hate and disorder disturbed the masses and 
spread confusion? Does it not often seem, in 
the midst of venality, impurity, and the debase- 
ment of conscience, as if the moral air be- 
came vitiated, and one were poisoned in breath- 
ing it, as if the contamination spread as in the 
time of an epidemic? Happily, the contrary 
is also true. There are examples which purify 
public opinion, — acts of energy, benevolence, 
disinterestedness, which are contagious for the 
good. 

I am not speaking here of our illustrious 
heroes, but of those obscure, unknown, unnamed 
heroes of whom the world is full. It is for 
them that I ask of youth eyes and ears to per- 
ceive, and a heart to admire. It is time to put a 
stop to this superstition of evil, to this invidious 
pessimism, propagated by conversation, by the 
press, by our novels, according to which there 
is nothing good anywhere in the world. The 
fanatic apostles of this superstition are so con- 
vinced of their belief, that when they meet a 
man of heart and generous action along their 
road, or in history, they prefer to impute to 



88 COURAGE. 

him low motives rather than to accept them 
for such as they are. The result is that the 
majority are more and more disposed to find 
only thieves and rogues in the world, and to 
seem to wait with resignation the occasion to 
become such themselves. Out upon this school 
of degradation, this conspiracy for ignominy ! 

The good exists; I shall prove it to you. 
Suppose that you found yourself in the midst 
of a large assembly, in a big hall, and that all of 
a sudden your neighbour said to you, " Do you 
know that everything here, the floor beneath 
you, the galleries, the columns, the walls, are 
rotten? " Do you think that you would believe 
what he said to you, and that this objection 
would not immediately present itself to your 
mind: "How is it possible for this rotten edi- 
fice to stand beneath the great weight of this 
assembly? There must still be some beams 
to hold, some parts of the wall that are solid, 
some columns that are strong." Such is the 
case in human society. The proof that certain 
good elements still exist is that this society has 
not yet gone to pieces. If there were only 
untrustworthy cashiers, venal writers, hypocrit- 



HEROIC EDUCATION. 89 

ical priests, bribed officers, dishonest employees, 
men without conscience, women without mod- 
esty, homes that are disunited, ungrateful chil- 
dren, depraved young people, — we should long 
since have been buried beneath our own 
ruins. 

Where is this good, of which I speak, to be 
found? We must seek for it. Those who seek 
for it and are capable of seeing it, will find it. 
I urge many young people to investigate this 
unknown region. They will discover many salu- 
tary herbs which will serve them as elixirs. 

The truth is, that no one has any idea of the 
number of good people who live about us. The 
amount of suffering patiently borne, the injuries 
pardoned, the sacrifices made, the disinterested 
efforts, are impossible to count. It is a world 
full of unknown splendours, like the profound 
grottoes lighted by the marvellous lamp of 
Aladdin. These are the reserves of the future ; 
these are the silent streams that run beneath the 
earth, and without which the sources of good 
would long since have become exhausted, and 
the world have returned to barbarism. Happy 
is he who can explore the sacred depths ! At 



90 COURAGE. 

first, one feels profane, small, out of place. 
There are people of such a simple benevolence, 
of such natural disinterestedness, that one feels 
poor and unworthy beside them ; but this is a 
grief which is salutary, a humiliation which 
exalts us. What can be better for a young 
man than to feel himself small and inferior in 
the presence of truth, of abnegation, and of pure 
goodness? If he is troubled, moved, bewildered, 
downcast; if he weeps; if his life, when com- 
pared with those which he sees about him, seems 
to him like a childish sketch by the side of a 
canvas of a great master, — so much the better 
for him. This humility is a proof in his favour, 
and places him at once in the path of progress. 
They say that young nightingales, whose voices 
are not yet formed, are very unhappy when 
they come into the presence of those older 
birds who fill the nights of summer with their 
music. When they hear them, they cease to 
sing, and remain silent for a long time. This 
is neither from a spirit of envy nor ill temper; 
but the ideal presented to them bewilders and 
disturbs them. They listen, they are intoxicated 



HEROIC EDUCATION. 91 

by the melody, and while thinking, perhaps, in 
their little bird brains, — 

" I can never hope to equal thee ! " 

they become so inspired that they end by 
singing in their turn. 

Hail to the good listener! 



VII. 

DIFFICULT BEGINNINGS. 



I was born like a weed between two paving-stones of 
Paris. — Michelet. 

Per angusta ad augusta. 



CHAPTER VII. 

DIFFICULT BEGINNINGS. 

AMONG the many paths which lead to cour- 
age, one of the steepest to climb is this : I wish 
to speak of the hard life which falls to the lot 
of so many young people. We like to see a 
little brightness shed on the beginning of life. 
It seems so natural that one should have time 
to be a child, to know pure joy, to lay up 
sunshine in one's heart, as a gage of hope for 
darker days. How many are there, however, 
who have a happy youth? Very few indeed. 

An old proverb, of a salutary wisdom despite 
its homely aspect, says, " It is better to eat 
our black bread at the start; " and it is not for 
me to gainsay the word of the prophet, " It is 
good for man to bear the yoke in his youth." 
But this does not authorise us to forget those 
whose early life is hard; for, alas, the begin- 
ning is often so long that one exhausts one's 



96 COURAGE. 

forces, and succumbs; and their name is legion 
for whom this beginning lasts forever! If the 
poet Lenau says somewhere, 

" My heart is given to the dear dead," 

I can say that mine belongs to all these suffer- 
ing young lives. Their anxieties, their struggles, 
their servitude, the injustice under which they 
suffer, the blows that strike them, inflict on 
me a permanent wound. There is not one of 
their causes which I do not espouse, not one 
of their miseries which I do not feel, not 
one of their hopes which I do not greet with 
transport ; and it is precisely for this reason 
that I would be to them, if only in a feeble 
way, a messenger of comfort. 

Everything is not to be regretted in the mis- 
fortunes which we endure; the essential thing 
is that we seek to derive from them some profit 
for our inward life. In this case, they may 
fortify us; and if we say that certain contrarie- 
ties and privations hinder us from living, it is 
true, but only in part. Whence are sprung 
the best men? They come from the land of 
great sorrows and great tribulations. The paths 



DIFFICULT BEGINNINGS. 97 

which lead to great heights are almost always 
obscure in the beginning. The easy grades are 
for those who descend ; the stony paths and 
steeps for those who mount. The past, by its 
acquired inertia, runs easily. It is a man arrive, 
who has his carriage and horses ; but he drives 
towards the end as a funeral towards the ceme- 
tery. The future, on the contrary, advances on 
foot, and sometimes drags itself along on its 
knees. 

Force, light, justice, benevolence, progress, 
— all these things come to us from those who 
have suffered. There are few good workmen 
who have not passed through long years of 
apprenticeship. When they tell you their his- 
tory, you find that they have had to submit to 
hard words, blows, accidents, poverty; but you 
will also find that all these things, instead of 
discouraging them, stimulated them, enlightened 
them, formed them. It is only by means of 
hard blows of the hammer and chisel that a 
block of marble, whence a statue is to spring, 
is reduced. Man cannot perfect himself other- 
wise ; and if he has stuff in him, if the seed be 
good, there is no need to fear the blows re- 
7 



98 COURAGE. 

ceived, or the corners chipped away. Even 
evil may be turned into good. I know emi- 
nent men who have great tenderness for young 
people and show much indulgence for them. 
Why? Because they have been ill-treated them- 
selves, because they have divined in weeping 
the value of gentle words. Gladly they say to 
themselves, " I have suffered too much from 
injustice not to try to spare others." Such 
lessons are well worth the pain they have 
cost ! 

The difficulties which many encounter in 
their families from the character of their rela- 
tives, from the defects or vices with which they 
are surrounded, often darken their first steps 
in life. In every class of society arc found 
children and young people neglected by those 
who should guide them, abandoned to them- 
selves or to hired guardians, deprived of ten- 
derness at the age when they have most need 
of it, lacking amusements, and incessantly re- 
buffed by cross words. Many have their lives 
complicated by the scandalous examples of 
those whose mission it should be to lead them 



DIFFICULT BEGINNINGS. 99 

aright. They have neither that filial respect 
nor tenderness, which it is so sweet to feel, to 
guard them from the errors of youth. Their 
fathers and mothers teach them precisely the 
thing which they should avoid, and their un- 
fortunate ideal consists in not resembling their 
parents. 

I think of those who have suffered early 
losses, of the orphans whose very name excites 
sympathy in the world. For one who finds 
moral support, how many are crushed by this 
abandonment ! Far from the warmth of the 
nest, they go through life accompanied always 
by a shadow. Who can count the struggles, 
the unknown tears, the secret anguish of so 
many young people? Who will seek them out 
in their loneliness? 

There is a large class of young people for 
whom the greatest danger springs from their 
temperament. While others follow the right 
way without great difficulty, they have to 
struggle against evil inclinations, uncontrolled 
impulses, and humiliating penalties. Their con- 
duct often resembles the gait of a furious pair 
of horses, who make their driver sweat blood. 



IOO COURAGE. 

Their reasons for discouragement increase ; their 
good-will, though often great, is not sufficient 
to keep them in the right path. They have 
days when they believe themselves lost, when 
they despair, despite all their efforts, of ever 
becoming men. 

Those who suffer in the domain of thought 
form, on their side, a group who endure the 
severest trials. Inch by inch they dispute the 
ground with their practical doubts and difficul- 
ties. These know the hunger and thirst of the 
spirit, the bitter torment of the unknown. They 
buy truth at the price of their peace, some- 
times of their health and life. Each ray of 
light is a conquest after a bitter struggle. 
They know what conviction costs when one 
takes the trouble to acquire it for oneself, and 
when the tempter approaches them under the 
form of ready-made systems of truths, which it 
is sufficient to admit en bloc, with closed eyes, 
they say to him, " Get thee behind me, Satan ! " 

It is, however, in these different worlds, in 
these glowing furnaces, that manly characters, 
loving hearts, and great souls are formed. The 



DIFFICULT BEGINNINGS. ioi 

leaders of all human thought have, almost with- 
out exception, passed through them. What 
would become of humanity without these 
schools of suffering? 

What makes these beginnings difficult above 
all else is poverty. I do not mean pauperism, 
nor that dark want which is without hope or 
help, wherein certain portions of society drag 
out a miserable existence, and of which I can 
only say this : it is a public shame, a disease 
which we must attack, relieve, seek to root out. 
It would be criminal to imagine that from this 
depraved milieu, where moral and material 
degradation are confounded, any force of char- 
acter could spring. We must admit, however, 
that this hideous poverty is the exception. It 
is the sink wherein the social refuse, engen- 
dered by our carelessness and vices, falls. 

There is another poverty. I refer to that to 
which one is reduced by illness, idleness, or 
perhaps the early death of parents, and which 
often creates such terrible situations. Or, again, 
I mean that poverty which simply consists 
in being reduced to the barest necessities of 



102 COURAGE. 

life, and wherein one does not know to-day 
what one will have to-morrow. It is an honest 
and interesting kind of poverty, which is often 
concealed, and which is only known to those 
who have experienced it. It is indeed a hard 
condition for the development of youth. To 
eat until one is satisfied is rare. One has a 
lodging, but it is narrow and sombre. Every- 
thing is limited, — even the air, if one lives in 
the city. This poverty seems to be a sort of 
slavery, judged from the thousand restrictions 
which it imposes on our movements ; and no 
one is so sensitive to this restraint as youth. 

Want is not the hardest thing to bear in pov- 
erty, but rather the offences against the moral 
order to which it subjects us, and the indignities 
to which we must submit. I appeal to all those 
who have had to suffer for their daily bread early 
in life, and who have taken their degree in 
bitterness and contumely. Poverty is not what 
certain idyllic conceptions have represented it 
to be. It is a crown of thorns ; but I hasten 
to add that everything depends on the brow 
which wears it. 

Those who wear it as a burden and disgrace 



DIFFICULT BEGINNINGS. 103 

hate it, and only find in it a lesson of degrada- 
tion, bitterness, and envy. I do not condemn 
them ; and if I plead extenuating circumstances, 
my plea can easily be turned into an accusation 
against those who are seated comfortably in 
the tribunal to judge them. I like better to 
think of those who bear their poverty cheer- 
fully, and finally come to love it, as one loves 
the dreary beauty of one's native soil, disin- 
herited by nature. These men are the strength 
of the world. 

I have walked through the country of poverty 
as through a land of marvels. I have travelled 
through it, not as a tourist, but as a native, ini- 
tiated into the secrets of the place, an enemy 
of the highways, a guest of unknown corners ; 
and I have found the little flowers of these 
woods and fields more beautiful than all the 
delicate flora of rich gardens and hot-houses. 
Such is the poverty of humble people who 
are sober and laborious, economic and gener- 
ous ; the poverty of the workman who is proud 
of his state ; the poverty of peasants and sail- 
ors who envy no one ; the poverty of students 
who have only a bed, a table, and a few loved 



104 COURAGE. 

books, but who live on the heights, and feel 
themselves richer than the masters of the 
world; the poverty of artists, not of those who 
know no other ambition but money, but of 
those who love beauty, and with whom the 
ideal is a passion; the poverty of scientific in- 
vestigators, who forget the hour that passes, 
and the pleasure that calls, and, like hunters, 
follow the steep paths and precipices after the 
fascinating trail of the unknown ; the poverty 
of the thinkers tormented by the infinite, solv- 
ing the problems of the world and those of the 
soul, which are greater than of the world ; the 
poverty of those who are persecuted for truth 
and justice, but whom nothing can move be- 
cause they fear nothing but cowardice ! 

I can never tire of admiring this kind of pov- 
erty. I remember in thinking of these difficult 
beginnings that Christ was poor, that Homer 
was poor, that Spinoza was poor, that Luther 
was poor, that Franklin was poor, that the most 
exalted experiences of Claude Bernard came to 
him in a damp cellar of the College de France, 
and that the paternal house of Pasteur was a 
little farm in the Jura. 



DIFFICULT BEGINNINGS. 105 

After seeing these instances accumulate be- 
neath my eyes, I almost tremble for those 
whose life is easy. I fear for their energy in 
the absence of effort; for their liberty, because 
of the hard servitude which the conventionali- 
ties and prejudices of the world lay upon them. 
I fear for their heart, which for want of suffer- 
ing may never know pity; for their judgment 
which may be warped and deceived by outward 
appearances. It is better to bring up children 
in the workshops than before the shop win- 
dows ; for in the workshops they see the labour 
of man, while in the windows they only see 
the result, and the temptation to forget the 
labourer is great. It is a pity to forget the 
peasant while eating our bread, the wood-cutter 
while warming ourselves before the logs. This 
is a temptation which I fear for those who have 
been brought up in luxury. These, too, in their 
way, have their difficult beginnings. I am often 
struck by this, and would give them this 
advice: Seek suffering; submit to labour. 
Go and do your work in the world of the hum- 
ble, and renounce for a while your privileges, 
which are but so many perils. Become poor 



106 COURAGE. 

from choice. It is not the same thing as to be 
poor from necessity, but it is nevertheless some- 
thing. If life calls you to command, woe to 
you, and to them who are confided to you, if 
you have not first obeyed, sweated, groaned 
beneath the burden ! No man should send 
another under fire, not having been there him- 
self! And from the young people I turn to 
the fathers of the rich classes and say to them, 
There are a number of excellent young people 
in your houses who are full of generous inten- 
tions, possessing within them the stuff necessary 
to become men. All that is lacking to them 
is a little poverty. You cannot refuse them 
this. Although it may cost you a little anxiety 
and uneasy solicitude, you should make them 
submit to it. 

In the desert, or in the forest, the deer at 
liberty lead a life full of hazard and struggle. 
The tempests break over them, the bullets of 
the hunters threaten them, hunger torments 
them. The uncertainty of the morrow is the 
rule. Many of them perish; but those who 
survive are vigorous, warlike, inured to all 
fatigue. Take these same deer and assure 



DIFFICULT BEGINNINGS. 107 

them against the changes of the season, the 
dangers of their adventurous life ; give them 
comfortable stables ; nourish them with discre- 
tion. There they are, at ease, with plenteous 
repasts and tranquil slumber, like the heirs of 
rich families. What becomes of them? Their 
tendons become soft, their eyes are no longer 
clear, their courage disappears. They become 
flabby, awkward, cowardly, contract vicious 
habits, — the result of ennui and a too tranquil 
life. If, by chance, they reproduce their species, 
their offspring will be only the shadow of their 
parents, and in the third or fourth generation, 
from decadence to decadence, they will no longer 
be able to propagate their species. Luxury will 
have exterminated them. 

Human life presents exactly the same pheno- 
mena. Too much security and luxury are bad 
for man ; he requires certain privations, dan- 
gers, and struggles to arrive at his normal de- 
velopment. Under these conditions his force 
increases, as well as his capacity for enjoy- 
ment. Open your eyes and look at the fami- 
lies, the generations, the peoples of the world. 
Wherever you find vitality, enthusiasm, pro- 



108 COURAGE. 

grcss, resources, moral, intellectual, and mate- 
rial, you will also find effort; but it often 
happens that families, like nations, forget this. 
After a generation of hard workers, their suc- 
cessors come, find comfort too near them, and 
set about enjoying it. They forget that there 
is no life except where there are difficulties to 
overcome, and that the only bread which is 
sweet is that which we have earned. Then 
they slumber in their ease, and the first signs of 
death are not long in making their appearance. 

Do not let us complain, then, too bitterly of 
these difficult beginnings. The* day when they 
will have ceased will be the beginning of the 
end. 



VIII. 
EFFORT AND WORK. 



Soon rounded grows the back of him 
Who 'neath no burden's heavy load, 
But o'er the spade, is forced to bend. 
And yet ere long the world would end, 
If he should seek to lift his head. 

Jean Aicard. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

EFFORT AND WORK. 

" Work, and take great pains, 
'T is capital which is least lacking." 

The fabulist forgot to add that this is exactly 
the thing which costs us most. Taking trouble 
is what each one seeks to avoid, even when in 
order to do so, he must add to that of others. 
Along the sunny road where I am walking, a 
little ass is dragging a cart. How he applies 
himself to his task! His short, quick steps, and 
his strained muscles, show the effort that he is 
making. In the cart a large, robust man is re- 
clining on the vegetables which he is going to 
sell in the city. The man is heavier than the 
ass, and probably stronger. How he can sleep 
there while the poor little beast struggles on 
is beyond my comprehension ; but, there ! he 
wakes and sits up. Now all will be right ! He 
has perceived, undoubtedly, that the road as- 
cends, and that he would do well to get out 



112 COURAGE. 

No; he takes his whip, gives several blows to 
the ass, and then lies down again. What a 
brute ! I feel a great desire to salute the poor, 
courageous little animal. While I continue my 
way, this revolting scene pursues me, aggravated 
by many touching incidents which my memory 
recalls; for such sights arc not uncommon. 
How many people recline and doze while the 
carriage ascends ! and it is not always beasts of 
burden, but sometimes human beings, wrjo drag 
it. I will explain. In this world where we 
live, I see many people who hate to make an 
effort, and who are always ready to cast their 
burdens on their neighbours' shoulders. A great 
number of cowardly deeds are done for the 
mere sake of escaping trouble. Indeed, one 
might almost believe that effort is one of the 
greatest enemies of mankind, and the fear in- 
spired by it is often so great that when men 
have to choose between effort and shame, they 
prefer shame. This is a grave mistake; we 
have no better friends than effort and work 
He who seeks to ameliorate his life by dimin- 
ishing his share of activity as much as possible, 
does not know what harm he is doing himself. 



EFFORT AND WORK. 



113 



A man is of value only in proportion to the 
trouble he takes. He who does nothing is 
worth nothing. An ass who works is a king 
by the side of an idle man, despite those fine 
ladies and gentlemen who, when they speak of 
the toilers, say with disdain, " Those persons ! " 
A certain inertia, one might almost say an in- 
fluence emanating from death, tends incessantly 
to neutralise and exhaust our vital force. Iron 
and steel rust; and every force, no matter what 
it may be, has beside it a principle of destruc- 
tion which attacks it, and will ruin it unless it 
defends itself. Man is not exempt from this 
law. He must struggle against rust by the 
regular exercise of his faculties. We are con- 
demned by an inevitable law to advance un- 
ceasingly under penalty of falling into decay. 
Movement is not only a sign of life; it is a 
source of life. To strengthen his muscles, to 
carry his body, to learn to use his hands, his 
eyes, to become accustomed to fatigue, to the 
rigours of the seasons, to the struggle against 
obstacles, to increase his intelligence by diffi- 
cult exercise, to familiarise his will with oppo- 
sition, to conquer his desires, his emotions, his 



114 COURAGE. 

passions, in a word, to tame and discipline his 
whole being, — such is the noble preoccupa- 
tion of any one who aspires to become a man. 
As soon as he applies himself to this task, 
which, I admit, is not without difficulty, he per- 
ceives how fortifying it is. Man fears exertion 
as he fears contact with cold water; but if he 
will conquer his repugnance, how much good 
and profit he derives from the alarming con- 
tact ! What frightened him at first comes to 
be his delight. He is only at ease in the use 
of his forces, and in their free play. He under- 
stands that he who increases his power, in- 
creases his capacity for enjoyment, augments 
his physical and moral health; and nothing 
seems more delightful to him than to feel him- 
self alert, enthusiastic, in possession of that 
vivacity which makes him ready at all times to 
give of himself. What he hates most is the 
somnolence, the weakness, the stupid and heavy 
ease of inaction. This ease seems to him stag- 
nation, reminds him of the tomb, and nothing 
frightens him so much as that fine and destruc- 
tive dust which settles over everything which 
has ceased to act, and slowly tarnishes it, 
smothers it, buries it. 



EFFORT AND WORK. 1 15 

The perfected form of effort is work. I would 
compare the man who aspires to live without 
work to the fish who dreams of the draining 
of the sea. Work is, par excellence, the element 
of life; and it is precisely for this reason that 
we must protest against the ordinary and low 
conception which the majority of men have of it. 
Some look upon work as a means of livelihood, 
others as a marketable article, which is more or 
less the same thing; but work is really some- 
thing different, and something more. It is very 
easy to describe the attitude of those who think 
it a marketable article, or a means of livelihood. 

If work is only the means of livelihood, it is 
evident that he who has no need to earn his 
living can do without it; and that, on the other 
hand, he who is obliged to work to earn his 
living will come to consider it a grievous neces- 
sity and burden ; in which case, his work is 
hated or despised, and eventually he seeks to 
escape from it. In this way we succeed in 
creating in society two classes of incompetent 
persons : the first are those who do without 
work because, through inheritance, speculation, 
happy chance, or through the exploitation of 



Il6 COURAGE. 

vice or theft, they have enough to live on ; the 
second class works, it is true, but reluctantly. 
It is evident that between these two classes of 
men there is a wide difference: the first are 
parasites on society, the others are its produc- 
tive elements. But what sort of a slave is the 
man who works without loving his work ! I 
can understand how a man should refuse to 
perform certain tasks which are inhuman and 
degrading, and which undermine his physical 
health, and lower his intelligence. It is the 
duty of all honest men to struggle constantly 
against working oneself, or making others work, 
in a way detrimental to life and human dignity; 
but do we not arrive at this slavish labour pre- 
cisely by means of the low conception we have 
of work in general? Any society founded on 
the idea that work is life would soon abolish 
all work that killed. 

What I have said of work as a means of 
livelihood, I shall say of work as a marketable 
article. A marketable article is something that 
can be bought and sold, and that can always 
be bought and sold. When it has been sold, 
and the price paid for it, the transaction is 



EFFORT AND WORK. 117 

ended. I protest absolutely against this con- 
ception of work, whence can arise only hate 
and ingratitude. It is a disgrace to say to the 
workman, " You are paid for that, and I owe 
you nothing more ; " and it is a disgrace to the 
workman to say, " I do this because I am paid 
to do it." Without doubt, all work deserves its 
compensation, and each man should be able 
to live by his labour; but to pretend that after 
these dealings all is at an end, is to reduce 
man to the condition of a mercenary, and to 
deprive him of his character of a free citizen. 
What shall I say? It is to degrade him lower 
than the nobler animals, and to put him on a 
par with mollusks and oysters, which possess few 
organs besides their stomachs. Work gives a 
man not only the right to eat, but the right to 
be respected, an equal consideration with who- 
ever works, his share of all that is human. Let 
no one talk to me of the law of might. The 
might lies much more in the hardness of our 
hearts than in any economic necessity according 
to which he who works most is always paid 
least. If we remember that human labour merits 
something more than this cold pay, which is 



Il8 COURAGE. 

often thrown at a man rather than given, the 
condition of those whose labour is crushing 
would soon be changed. 

As for him who says, "I am paid, therefore 
I work," and who only works for that, he 
acknowledges that he sells himself. He avows 
that his motive is money, and that what he docs 
interests him for no other reason. If he were 
paid, he would do exactly the contrary. And, 
in truth, it is thus that he reasons: " After all, 
one must live!" This is what many people 
say when they are criticised for the sort of work 
they do, for their shameful commerce, for their 
venality. A sneak thief said to me one day c 
" You know I must live." " Then if I paid you 
more than you can earn in this way, would you 
turn round and denounce other sneak thieves?" 
" Certainly, Monsieur." He was logical, and he 
who would serve two hostile powers at the same 
time, taking pay from both, would be still more 
logical. 

This is the end to which the conception of 
work as a means of livelihood and as a saleable 
article leads us. Such ideas are a disgrace to 
mankind ! They must be attacked like wild 



EFFORT AND WORK. 119 

beasts; and we must disinfect ourselves against 
them, as against the plague and cholera. But 
why all these considerations? Why should we 
make them here ? I wish to show that work is 
the mainstay of life ; and, in order to do so, we 
must first get rid of all the unhealthy and un- 
just notions which deform it, and hinder us 
from recognising its real character. 

After this I will appropriate the formula 
which has been so badly applied, and I will 
affirm that nothing is truer, as has been said, 
than that man must live, and that man works 
for his life. The mistake consists in believing 
that a man lives when he has sold himself for 
a piece of bread, or for a little money ; for, in 
truth, he who does this is twice dead. To live 
is equivalent to saying that one increases and 
grows in every part of one's being, in one's heart, 
in one's intelligence, in one's conscience, in 
one's affections, — in all that makes us better and 
stronger; and in every domain, nothing is ac- 
quired except by hard work, and nothing belongs 
to us except by right of conquest. Work is the 
great organ through which man assimilates his 
nourishment; and the more elevated, compli- 



T20 COURAGE. 

cated, and precious his life is, the more impor- 
tant becomes the kind of work he does. And 
the life with which we are concerned here is 
not that of the individual alone: all labour 
is done by the individual for the benefit of the 
world. Whoever fulfils any useful function 
should fulfil it with his whole soul, feeling that 
he is working for all. Human labour is a large 
co-operation wherein everything, from the sim- 
plest and most obscure manual labour to the most 
complicated, and from the most elementary intel- 
lectual work to the highest, is united in one 
effort and converges towards one end. Hu- 
manity works for life; that is to say, not only 
for existence, but for truth, justice, benevo- 
lence, which are its flowers. Whoever joins in 
this work is by this work ennobled. In this 
immense labour which we may compare to 
the construction of a beautiful building, he 
should apply himself to his task with the same 
pride, whether he be mason, sculptor, architect, 
or plasterer. 

Work is a great revelation. It discovers to 
man his dignity and the value of everything 



EFFORT AND WORK. 12 1 

that costs him pain. The idle man is consumed 
by ennui. He despises others because he can- 
not respect himself. However sumptuous may 
be the outside with which he covers his useless 
existence, a secret voice whispers to him that 
he is at bottom good for nothing, or only good 
to be thrown away. The ant who works, the 
bee who gathers honey, the smith who strikes 
his anvil, the pupil who spells, every one who 
works and suffers, pronounces on him as they 
pass the sentence of death: " He who does not 
work shall not eat." And though he should 
sit down at laden tables, he dies of mental star- 
vation. The source of life is closed for him. 
On the other hand, he who works feels himself 
at home in the immense living organism. The 
movement of the whole encourages him and 
sustains him, provided that he feels that his 
effort is useful to the whole. If any one thinks 
that artistic work is the only occupation 
which permits a man to put his whole soul into 
his work, he deceives himself. All work, pro- 
vided that it be intelligent, honest, and useful, 
can be done with one's whole heart. And it 
is only under this condition that it becomes 



122 COURAGE. 

profitable to society and to the labourer him- 
self. I do not know if it is easy to understand 
what I am trying to say here ; but I know that 
it is indispensable that one should understand it. 

As for me, I know of nothing finer than a 
man who loves his work, who feels the poetry 
of it, its peculiar charm, and gives us the im- 
pression that he believes in it while achiev- 
ing it. We call this working with conviction. 
The sceptics and the idlers pronounce this 
word with a malicious accent. They confound 
a man who works with conviction with one who 
is deceived. In reality, nothing is more inaccu- 
rate than their opinion, and nothing is greater 
than the things they despise. The essential 
thing in life is to arrive, despite fatigue, annoy- 
ance, and the thousand little contrarieties inher- 
ent in each state, to a comprehension of the 
inward meaning of the whole. This is the hap- 
piness and consolation of life. I have this idea 
so much at heart, and it seems to me so impor- 
tant, that you must permit me to repeat it 
once more, while making use of a simile. 

To those who look at their work only from 
the outside, on the material and often common- 



EFFORT AND WORK. 123 

place side, it appears to them gloomy and col- 
ourless. It seems to have no meaning. It has 
neither charm nor value. It is like looking at 
the windows of a church from the outside, at 
the windows of old cathedrals that have grown 
dark and dusty with time. Everything is lost 
beneath a monotonous, formless grey. But 
cross the threshold, and penetrate to the in- 
terior. Immediately the colours stand forth, 
the lines are seen, the tracery becomes evident. 
There is the marvellous play of the sun through 
the sparkling stones, a feast for the eyes, a tri- 
umph of art. This is the case with human 
activity. We must look at it from the inside. 
We must try to penetrate sufficiently far into 
our career, our vocation, to perceive through 
the forms which, from without, seemed dim, 
the effects of a light which falls from the eternal 
heights. 

Through all human effort, through the long 
and patient ingenuity of man and the ob- 
stacles of all kinds which he has encountered, 
the labourer comes to divine in part the secret 
meaning of history. The great work of the 
centuries can only interest him who takes part 



124 COURAGE. 

in it. And further, the soul of creation only- 
reveals itself to the toiler. He perceives every- 
where effort and hope, and comes to under- 
stand the meaning of one of the most beautiful 
mottoes which the wisdom of the centuries has 
found : Fac et spera ! " Work and hope ! " 

I stop here without having said all that I 
should like to say. It would be easier to count 
the stars than to enumerate the splendours of 
work. It is sufficient for me to have indicated 
them. Experience alone can make one under- 
stand the profound peace, the courage, the 
exuberant joy with which the heart is filled, 
when one drinks from this animating and gen- 
erous source. 



IX. 

FAITHFULNESS. 



I die where my heart is. — Old Device. 

Woe to those who forget ! They not only lose the 
value of their experience, but the sentiment of their indi- 
viduality. They know not who they are, nor what they 
are worth. — Edgar Quinet. 



CHAPTER IX. 

FAITHFULNESS. 

SOME one has thus summarised the line of 
conduct of a noble human life: we must walk 
through darkness to the light, of which we 
have caught but a momentary glimpse. 

This is scarcely the programme of the major- 
ity, which might thus be formulated : to con- 
ceive a mass of ideas, to approve and exalt 
first one and then the other according to the 
caprice or interest of the moment, to make 
schemes and plans, only to abandon them all 
and pass to others. 

The great majority of men resemble those 
painters who have never finished a picture. 
They have portfolios and studios filled with 
sketches. If these sketches even revealed any 
unity of purpose ! But this is exactly what 
they lack. The artist has made successive 
essays in most opposite styles. And none of 
these beginnings show any advance over their 



128 COURAGE. 

predecessors. There is nothing but chaos and 
incoherence. At the end of such a life, the un- 
fortunate man looks back and generally com- 
plains of his bad luck or of an unappreciative 
world. He sees with bitterness that others, 
with less talent than himself, have succeeded, 
while he, with all his ideas and genius, for he 
always thinks he has it, has arrived at nothing. 
There are a few who perceive that the enemy 
of which they complain resides in their own 
bosom ; but it is too late to take advantage of 
this discovery: they cannot begin life anew. 

And yet men have a sufficient number of 
examples before their eyes to teach them 
wisdom. 

The patient and unswerving efforts which Na- 
ture gives to her work are so many lessons. Her 
evolution is accomplished with irresistible slow- 
ness and logic. Everywhere we perceive tenacity 
and sequence; never any interruption or haste. 
I am seated on the shore of the ocean. The 
sand left by the waves dries in the sun and then 
the wind sweeps it up, grain by grain, and piles 
it slowly into immense dunes until they become 
veritable mountain chains. What careful work! 



FAITHFULNESS. 1 29 

It is coarse, however, compared with Nature's 
formation of crystals, vegetables, and animals. 
Nothing is accomplished without this rigorous 
economy of forces, each one fulfilling its office 
and converging towards its end with imperturb- 
able calm. Why should a man seek to dissipate 
his energy, to divide it, to destroy it by lack of 
continuity? 

Let us have unity in our lives. Let us do 
few things and do them well. How foolish it 
seems to say this ! People will wonder why 
I dip pen in ink to write such platitudes. 
Has n't- the whole world known this for a long 
time? This is exactly the unfortunate part of 
it. All the world knows it, and nobody lives 
up to it. We continue to dissipate our intelli- 
gence and good-will until we no longer perceive 
any effect from them. And so I shall not allow 
myself to be cried down by those who invoke 
the terrifying name of M. de La Palisse. I have 
a fixed idea, and I wish to make others under- 
stand it. My fixed idea is that steadfastness 
is the indispensable quality of every man who 
one day does not wish to be obliged to say: " I 
have wasted my life." 

9 



130 COURAGE. 

A man should not incessantly change with 
every impression of the moment, but should 
remain steadfast when he has once determined 
upon what is right. Of what use are the flowers 
if they do not produce fruits, and of good ideas 
if they are not transmuted into deeds? We 
must encourage stability, habituate ourselves 
to remain constant, and when we are sure that 
we are right, must fortify ourselves against in- 
vasion. Do not let criticisms or attacks disturb 
you. 

Nothing is so difficult as to remain faithful. 
At each step of the way outside influences are 
brought to bear upon us to make us deviate or 
retrograde. And if there were only difficulties 
from without, it would not matter so much; but 
there are those from within. Our dispositions 
vacillate. We promise one thing with the best 
intentions in the world ; but when the time comes 
to keep it, everything is changed, — the circum- 
stances, men, ourselves ; and what duty demands 
of us seems so different from what we had fore- 
seen, that we hesitate. Those who will fulfil on 
a rainy day a promise which they have made 
on a sunny one, are few and far between. And 



FAITHFULNESS. 13 1 

so we go on casting our hearts to the four winds, 
giving it and taking it back again, breaking with 
our past, separating ourselves from ourselves, so 
to speak. And when we look behind, we no 
longer recognise ourselves. We see ourselves 
in the days that are past as a stranger, or rather 
as several strangers. This is the more heart- 
breaking as man has at bottom a great desire 
for stability. This traveller is ever seeking a 
home ; he covets a fatherland. From the per- 
petual mutability of the conditions of life he 
derives an impression of melancholy. To have 
a corner where he can lay his head, some place 
where he can settle down and take root, is the 
dream which he brings back from his pere- 
grinations. But to gain this, he must build his 
house and cultivate his garden; he must have 
his love, his faith, his work, to justify his pas- 
sage here below and enable him to lead a useful 
life and die in peace. 

There is nothing like a steadfast man, one in 
whom you can have confidence, one who is 
found at his post, who arrives punctually, and 
who can be trusted when you rely on him. He 



132 COURAGE. 

is worth his weight in gold. You can take your 
bearings from him, because he is sure to be 
where he ought to be, and nowhere else. The 
majority of individuals, on the contrary, are sure 
to be anywhere but where they ought to be. 
You have only to take them into your calcula- 
tions to be deceived. Some of them arc change- 
able from weakness of character; the)- cannot 
resist attacks, insinuations, and, above all, can- 
not remain faithful to a lost cause. A defeat 
in their eyes is a demonstration of the fact 
that their adversary was right and that they 
were wrong. When they see their side fail, 
instead of closing up the ranks, they go over 
to the enemy. These are the men who arc 
always found on the winning side, and not 
in their hearts would be found the courageous 
device: Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa 
Catoni. 

But there arc others who are fickle from van- 
ity. It seems to them poor taste not to change. 
First, because it is monotonous; and in the sec- 
ond place, because it is a sign of limited intelli- 
gence. A man of intelligence, who has many 
resources, cannot be content with one idea, one 



FAITHFULNESS. 1 33 

work ; to be the champion of one cause. He 
must make the world believe that he has more 
than one string to his bow. 

There is one kind of fidelity that is daily at- 
tacked : this is veracity. To break one's word is 
rather a sign of an open mind than of a low 
and dishonest soul. A talented musician who 
respects himself would not be willing to play 
only one tune. He changes both the tune and 
the manner. I regret that an ability to break 
one's word, fail in one's engagements, betray 
one's friends, is often described as clever, in a 
time when cleverness passes for one of the 
greatest qualities of man. All this is the re- 
sult of a profound cause which I cannot suffi- 
ciently stigmatise : this cause is the debasement 
of man's promise. What is a promise for peo- 
ple who pass their days in making promises? 
When a thing has been abused to this point, it 
loses all value. How can you expect that a 
gossip should put his whole soul into each 
word he speaks? He drops his words as a tree 
does its dead leaves, and forgets them as soon 
as they are fallen. We are so accustomed to 
the emptiness of promises that a thing once 



134 COURAGE. 



said is no longer sacred. Our word is no longer 
respected as a part of ourselves. That a word 
is a deed, and that after having given it we 
should become its slave, is an idea that is going 
more and more out of fashion. And this state 
of things is a source of weakness. 



I am humiliated to be obliged to speak of 
another virtue, the sister of veracity; namely, 
honesty. It becomes as difficult to speak of 
either as to talk of the rope in the house of a 
man who has been hanged. Honesty, in fact, 
has been limited to the sonorous homage we 
pay to it in words only. 

I am not a pessimist by nature. Honesty 
exists, I know. We have a thousand proofs of 
it daily. I am delighted to recognise it, and 
the good which I do not see consoles me for 
the many infamies which I see too clearly. 
But what frightens me is that honesty seems 
to be out of fashion with us, and that many 
think that to be honest has an air of imbecility, 
and no longer believe in it because they judge 
others by themselves. What also frightens me 
is the co-existence, in the minds of many men 



FAITHFULNESS. 



135 



who pass for honest, and are so in part, of two 
different standards of morality. 

We have a morality for Sunday, which is 
upright, has clean hands, and would disdain to 
keep a penny that belonged to others, or to 
commit one indelicate act. And this is the 
morality which we teach to our children. But 
it seems rather too exalted for our own daily 
use. We shut it up in our chests and closets, 
like our precious plate which we use only on 
feast-days, and surround it with profound re- 
spect. For ordinary use we have an every-day 
morality, accommodating, flexible, elastic, which 
allows us to profit by sharp bargains and get 
out of scrapes. I have seen astonishing things, 
and what distressed me most was that no one 
else thought them astonishing. Here is one 
instance among a thousand. An honest man 
finds himself, after a series of misfortunes, in a 
compromised situation. If he pays all that he 
owes, he can liquidate his debts and emerge 
with a lost fortune, but with a clear conscience. 
He can also, by means of certain easy and 
customary combinations, so arrange his affairs 
as not to pay everything, and so keep a pretty 



136 COURAGE. 

slice for himself and his family. His character 
does not allow him to hesitate ; he chooses the 
first method. Very well ; this man is called 
before the tribunal of his friends, of his neigh- 
bours, of his children, of his wife, and treated 
by them as a fool, a bad economist, a father 
without pity. " You wish to bring us to the 
workhouse ! And what will your daughters do 
if they have no dowry? And who will receive 
us when they know that we have lost every- 
thing? Do you believe that your creditors will 
be grateful?" etc., etc. — Here is a man who 
is despised, and who, because he wished to 
remain upright, loses what is more precious than 
his fortune, — the affection and consideration 
of those belonging to him. But the very per- 
sons who now treat him so badly sang the 
praises of honesty when their interests were 
not in jeopardy. That was the time for their 
Sunday morality. To-day they make use of the 
other kind. They are like cats, who, according 
to the occasion, show you their velvet paws or 
their sharp claws. 

A profound duplicity, a discrepancy between 
words and deeds, between appearance and real- 



FAITHFULNESS. 137 

ity, a sort of .moral dilettantism which makes 
us according to the hour sincere or hypocritical, 
brave or cowardly, honest or unscrupulous, — 
this is the disease which consumes us. What 
moral force can germinate and grow under these 
conditions? We must again become men who 
have only one principle, one word, one work, 
one love ; in a word, men with a sense of duty. 
This is the source of power. And without this 
there is only the phantom of a man, the unstable 
sand, and hollow reed which bends beneath 
every breath. Be faithful ; this is the changeless 
northern star which will guide you through the 
vicissitudes of life, through doubts and discour- 
agements, and even mistakes. 



X. 

GAIETY. 



Vous ircz devant vous, — non sans butcr aux pierres, 
Non sans meurtrir vos pieds aux ronces du chemin, 

Mais vaillants, refoulant vos pleurs sons vos paupiercs, 
Et, — la plume, ou l'outil, ou le glaive a la main, 
Le cerveau toujours clair, le coeur toujours humain, — 
Ayant contre la vie a certains jours mediants 
L'ideal qui sourit et la muse qui chante ! 

Francois Faihk. 



You pursue your way, not without stumbling against 

stones, 
Not without hurting your feet from the roughness of the 

road, 
But courageously, pressing back the tears that spring to 

your eyes, — 
With your pen, your instrument, or your sword in hand, 
Your mind clear and your heart kind, — 
Having with you, as a charm against evil days. 
An ideal that smiles at you, and a muse that sings. 



CHAPTER X. 

GAIETY. 

I WOULD not hurt the feelings of those who 
weep for anything in the world. I would rather 
weep with them. I know too well what human- 
ity owes to grief to experience any sentiments 
in its presence but those which are expressed 
on bended knees and with joined hands. This 
being understood, I shall be able to speak my 
opinion freely and to break a lance with the 
enemies of gaiety. 

I picture Beneficence to myself with a smiling 
countenance, animated by an inward serenity 
which triumphs over all the difficulties of life, 
and even over its severest trials. 

And evil appears to me morose, with a 
dismal countenance that darkens even the most 
brilliant joys. It is repugnant to me to see 
righteousness wearing the livery of night, and 



142 COURAGE. 

going about attired in black. Black is the 
symbol of pessimism, the sign of nothingness. 
Consequently I distrust those gloomy moralists 
who preach righteousness with a sinister mien. 
They seem to me like brooms covered with dust, 
which spoil what they were meant to cleanse. 

And what I say of these moralists applies 
equally well to all those who are trying to lead 
a righteous life. Discard your sombre air! Is 
it not fitting that the gay humour of brave men 
should bear perpetual witness to the splendour 
of righteousness? 

It is a singular way of honouring duty, — that 
of seeming to drag it through life as a burden, 
instead of wearing it as a crown. A long and 
mournful countenance would lead one to sup- 
pose that you lacked confidence in the final 
victory of good, or that you still regretted the 
evil distractions and forbidden pleasures which 
you have renounced. 

There are a thousand good reasons why you 
should allow the ideal which you serve to pierce 
through even the most serious cares. 

Above all, I love a courageous gaiety, — one 
that can accomplish great deeds with smiles and 



GAIETY. 143 

song, that gaiety of the soldier who makes the 
best of everything, seasons his thin porridge 
with a joke, laughs over his primitive bed, the 
inclemency of the seasons, and hums the tunes 
of his native country while firing his gun. This 
gaiety is attractive, is inspiring. Indeed, when 
you see people carried away by this enthusiasm, 
you can but envy them, and long to follow in 
their footsteps and imitate them. I do not 
know why this disposition of the soul touches 
me as well as inspires me. Perhaps it is be- 
cause I have often witnessed it in most trying 
moments. 

Here is a family who is suffering the greatest 
anxiety on account of an operation which one 
of its members is to undergo. The hour has 
arrived. The physicians are there. They ap- 
proach the patient. Will you think them frivo- 
lous and hard-hearted if they are cheerful; if 
they conquer the heavy atmosphere of anxiety 
that rests over the house, and their own fears, 
and the numerous preoccupations which possess 
them; if they go to the invalid with smiles, 
with comforting words, with a gay humour? 
Would you say that these physicians were hard- 



144 COURAGE. 

hearted, and had no sympathy for the poor 
creature whose flesh they are about to cut and 
tear? Will you not rather think that they do 
well, and be grateful to them for their gaiety 
as for a good deed? 

When the relations in a household are strained, 
the members of different opinions, and a storm 
is about to break, would you be angry with any 
one who was calm, and discussed the burning 
questions at issue with delicate tact, and thus 
avoided an explosion? 

One day after a little matinee given by some 
young people, two old women, who were very 
poor, came to me with tears in their eyes to 
thank me: "We have laughed so heartily. It 
is years since we laughed so. It is difficult 
to live when existence is so hard ! " Then I 
understood that we must place Moliere and 
Labiche among the benefactors of mankind, 
and all those who, like them, have known how 
to make poor mortals smile, who weep so 
often. 

In reality, gaiety is a triumph: the triumph 
of mind over material obstacles. It is a ray of 
sunshine on a stormy day; a happy messenger 



GAIETY. 145 

who comes to tell us that all is not lost, that 
hope remains, and will remain always in spite 
of all things. 

Let us here consider for a moment all those 
timid and querulous persons and that large army 
of the crabbed who pretend to have the mo- 
nopoly of seriousness, and who only caricature 
it. What do these people do? They embitter 
all disputes, and make every situation worse. 
They augment discord by their murmurs and 
complaints. They drown themselves on dry 
land. They throw sand into the machinery, 
where gaiety drops oil. When men of this 
stamp meet together in any painful situation, 
instead of co-operating with one another they 
accuse every one, cry out against men and God, 
and finish by censuring one another. What 
ridiculous creatures they are, and how impor- 
tant they think themselves ! There are days 
when it would seem as if the world were created 
for their annoyance, and that all nature had 
entered into a conspiracy against their serenity. 
"JSuch things only happen to us ! These things 
happen on purpose ! " In every situation of 
life, they think themselves misplaced. To how 



146 COURAGE. 

much better advantage they would have ap- 
peared somewhere else, with chosen compan- 
ions who were more worthy of them ! They 
do not know how to be rich or poor, well or 
ill, sad or gay. Coming in contact with them 
is like coming in contact with a porcupine, 
while they regard themselves as so many un- 
fortunate victims, so many pariahs whom every 
one avoids. 

Young people, do not imitate them ! Such 
a spirit is the worst sort of impediment. Not 
only is it unproductive itself, but it sterilises 
everything about it. 

Let me recommend gaiety to you. It knows 

- 
how to be at ease everywhere. Tt is cheering, 

enterprising, pliant. It is not blind to obstacles. 
It has nothing in common with a continual flow 
of pleasantry, nor with that stupid optimism or 
naive contentment of material people who seem 
to say: "My friends, I have eaten till I am 
filled, drunk till I am satisfied, may the uni- 
verse make merry ! " But if gaiety perceives 
obstacles, it knows how to conquer them. It 
has many means at its command, does not 
spare its fatigue; it is not discouraged by 



GAIETY. 147 

wasted efforts, and knows the rare art of 
beginning over. 

It is the duty of every man to cultivate a 
moral state which will render him equal to 
the emergencies of life. To devote ourselves 
to both our corporal and spiritual re-creation, 
is not only our privilege, but our duty. We 
must renew the oil in our lamp and polish , 
the glass, or it will soon cease to give light. 
Recreation, pleasure, innocent distractions of 
all kinds, must not be relegated to the cate- 
gory of the superfluous, where the utilitarians 
would so gladly banish them, but must be 
classed with the necessary. It is bad for man 
to pursue his labour until he loses all pleasure 
and joy in it, and renders himself incapable of 
continuing it. Learn to husband your forces; 
stop sometimes, in order to start again with a 
firmer step ; learn the art of amusing yourself 
and amusing others : it is one of the sweetest 
privileges of humanity. 

And do not imbibe any scruples from persons 
whose virtue is gloomy, who know not how to 
laugh heartily, or sing gayly, or become chil- 
dren again for an hour by laying aside the 



148 COURAGE. 

garments of worldly conventions. Cultivate 
joy without fear: it is a source of strength 
which God has created for brave hearts. Other- 
wise we would be obliged to admit that all the 
good things of life, its smiles, and whatever 
relaxes our nerves, cures our spleen, clears our 
ideas, were made for the wicked, the idle, the 
men of evil lives, who abuse life's enjoyments 
and degrade all that they touch. Would it 
not be absurd to believe this? Gaiety is the 
secret of the courageous, and one of their 
recompenses. They alone really know it, as 
they alone are worthy to know it. 



XI. 

MANLY HONOUR. 



A UN JEUNE HOMME. 

SONNET 

Lorsque la chair gouverne et que Pinstinct rebelle 
Donne a la voluptc le sceptre de l'amour, 
L'ame, vers Its bas-fonds entratne'e a son tour, 
Y roule avec la chair et s'y fle'trit comme elle. 

Mais quand Fame est maitresse, et d'un coup de son aile 
Loin des brouillards epais monte jusqu'au grand jour, 
Elle ennoblit tout l'etre, en son royal scjour, 
Et prete au corps lui-meme une beautc nouvelle. 

Sois fort, sois fier, sois homme, et, sans la devancer, 
Attends l'heure sacree ou tu pourras presser 
Sur ton sein restd vierge une chaste compagne ; 

Et l'etoile du soir, blanche au bord du ciel bleu, 
Vous renverra l'dcho de la sainte montagne : 
" Heureux sont les cceurs purs, parce qu'ils verront Dieu." 
Annie des Pottes, 1892. (Sans nom d'auteur.) 



When the flesh governs, and our rebellious instincts 
Hand over to voluptuousness the sceptre of love, 
The soul in its turn is dragged down 
And wallows, and with the flesh is defiled. 

But when the soul is mistress, and with the stroke of her 

wings 
Flies far above the dense clouds into the clear air, 
She exalts the whole creature by her regal presence, 
And lends even to the body a new beauty. 

Be strong, be proud, be a man, and do not anticipate 

The holy hour when you shall ; 

To your virgin heart a chaste companion ; 

And the evening star, pale on the edge of the blue heavens, 

Will repeat to you the echoes of the holy hills : 

" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall sec God." 



CHAPTER XI. 

MANLY HONOUR. 

Is it true that honour has a different meaning 
for men and women? Does woman's honour 
lie principally in her modesty and man's in his 
courage? It does not displease me to make 
this distinction, and to acknowledge that this 
may be true. But then I beseech men to keep 
themselves pure for the sake of their courage. 
Is it not more manly to be able to resist one's 
desires and govern them than to be at their 
mercy? Is it a good preparation for the strug- 
gles and perils of life to begin by capitulating 
to sensuality, and holding out our vanquished 
arms to it, and bearing its yoke forever after 
with the docility of slaves? 

Is not sensuality, on the contrary, rather a 
favourable soil for the growth of every vice ? 

One of the most respected teachers of youth 
in our time, and one who certainly could not 



152 COURAGE. 

be suspected of monastic ideas, used to say to 
his young disciples: "If the opportunities of 
exercising your wills seem to you to be too 
rare in your ordinary existence, here is an 
excellent occasion for practice : try to govern 
yourselves honourably in all things relating 
to love. Seek to remain chaste. You will 
strengthen your wills by constant effort, and 
your vital power will be increased by your 
restraint instead of weakened by dissipation." 
This is counsel which I echo with all my 
heart. I do not underrate the number of strug- 
gles, the amount of heroism, — the word is not 
too strong, — which will be required by the 
youth who seeks to follow it. I do not hide 
from myself the difficulties, even the disadvan- 
tages, of such an effort. And it is only after 
turning the delicate problem over and over 
again in my mind, that I resolved to advocate 
this austere line of conduct. More than one 
will feel he has not the courage to adopt it. 
Others will be conquered after hard and vain 
strueeles. Others acrain will deride the idea 
as Utopian, and cite the physicians, not to men- 
tion the cynics and scoffers. But when there 



MANLY HONOUR. I 53 

is only one road possible, I cannot point out 
a second. And God be praised that this one is 
possible ! Chastity is possible for a young man 
who has the courage to elect it; and from the 
physical point of view, the great majority of 
physicians will tell you that the disadvantages 
of it are not nearly so great as those of the 
opposite policy. Moreover, we have only to 
look at the youth about us. The physical con- 
dition of our young men leaves much to be 
desired in all classes of society, and exuberance 
is certainly not the dominant characteristic. 
Under what regime could it be cultivated to 
better purpose than under one which looked to 
the conservation of all one's vital forces? From 
the point of view of morality, the answer is ob- 
vious. For the sake of gratifying the desires 
of an hour a man should not lower his dignity 
and enter upon a path where he will be ex- 
posed to such degrading compromises and 
shameful possibilities. No matter how legiti- 
mate this need of our nature may be, it must 
be restrained and kept in its proper place. 
Woe to the man whose appetite governs him, 
and whose intelligence, conscience, and dignity 



154 COURAGE. 

give way before it! Under all circumstances it 
is better to suffer than to degrade oneself. 

' I have always thought that to have a low 
opinion of masculine honour was a curious way 
of proving oneself a man. I would like to go 
a little further. What I recommend is not 
monastic chastity. Those who practise that, 
seek to correct Nature, whom they despise. I, 
on the contrary, would follow her while respect- 
ing her. Of all the mysteries which the Su- 
preme Will has placed in us, none is more 
inscrutable than life itself. The transmission of 
life is confided to our care. It is from this 
point of view that I would like to make every 
youth realise that he is a man, and feel a noble 
pride in the fact and a profound sense of the 
responsibility resting on him. The source of 
life is not ours alone. We have no right to 
disturb it, defile it, or confiscate it. If eachtme 
of us owes himself to his country, and to hu- 
manity, from whom he has received everything; 
if the man who honours himself most is he who 
consecrates his intelligence, his labours, his for- 
tune, his influence, to his country and to the 
salvation of his fellows, — he must not lose sight 



MANLY HONOUR. 155 

of the fact that all this activity has for its aim 
and principle, life. What purpose would your 
best deeds serve if, by profaning the sources of 
life, you sinned against a good that was indis- 
pensable to the very existence of others? We 
forget too easily the sanctity of life. It helps 
a man to feel respect for himself, to feel that 
life proceeds from God, and that it gathers up 
in itself all the pain of the past and hope of 
the future. When a man understands this, he 
willingly sacrifices a fleeting gratification in 
order to keep it pure, strong, invincible, and 
to transmit it undefiled as he received it. 

Hitherto we have only considered the subject 
from the man's point of view. But the problem 
grows more complicated when we study it from 
the point of view of the man's conduct towards 
the woman. And as we are considering it as 
a question of courage, no one will contradict 
me when I affirm that courage is the sister of 
love. All that is opposed to love is opposed 
to courage. Each time that you commit a deed 
contrary to true love, you are guilty of coward- 
ice, not only towards yourself, but towards 
the woman. In proportion as true love is 



156 COURAGE. 

generous, kind, and devoted, mere passion is 
cunning, cruel, calculating, and egotistical. It 
is not generous to contribute to the degradation 
of a woman even if she be among the least 
respectable of her kind in common eyes. She 
is always a woman ; and just as it is cowardly 
to kick a dead man who can no longer feel it, 
so it is cowardly to add a jot to the shame of 
any creature, even if she be fallen so low that 
she is no longer conscious of it. 

It is not generous to accept and take advan- 
tage of the love of a pure young girl and play 
with her sentiments, if one does not love her, 
and has no intention of making her share his 
life. 

I am neither partial nor pessimistic, and I have 
no reason to exalt the woman at the expense of 
the man. But I cannot avoid observing life. 
And I am forced to avow that there is one 
chapter wherein woman shows herself to be 
man's superior in the matter of generosity and 
sacrifice : this is the sad chapter of forgotten 
and betrayed love. There, on the one side, I 
see much naive confidence, forgetfulness of self, 
and true tenderness ; on the other, many fair 



MANLY HONOUR. 1 57 

promises, odious betrayals, cold and despicable 
calculations. 

A man does not clear himself of such shame 
by going into the field and giving sad proof of 
his manliness with a few sword-thrusts' or pistol- 
shots. The best measure of a man is his con- 
duct towards woman. 

These are a few points which I submit to the 
consideration of young men who are not indif- 
ferent to these questions, and who do not think 
that they can remain honourable men while 
trampling under foot all that honour holds 
most dear. Vulgar morality is very sure of its 
opinion. It proclaims its cynical ideas on chas- 
tity, woman, and love with admirable assurance. 
But I judge by the fruits of its doctrines : I ask 
an explanation of the world of degradation, 
suffering, violence, and despair which it creates. 
It cannot find a word to justify itself. 

Let us turn to more cheerful considerations. 
I am going to speak of the compensations 
reserved for those who respect themselves and 
women. Though, if there were no recompense 
for the privations accepted for the sake of 



158 COURAGE. 

honour, I should still see no way to avoid 
them. 

But these recompenses exist. There is one, 
and the greatest of all, which never fails, and 
that is the consciousness of having done right: 
a lasting pleasure which is well worth a man's 
passing gratification. 

But there are others. In the first place, all 
desires conquered transmute themselves into joy 
in living, the faculty of being happy. " Pure 
love is a fountain of poetry, joy, enthusiasm, as 
well as of power and courage. To those who 
practise manly chastity belongs pre-eminently 
the secret of virtue. Virtue is but the epitome 
of all the qualities that flourish in this high and 
holy atmosphere. 'T is here we find steadfast, 
unconquerable hearts, far-seeing eyes, arms that 
are capable of dealing mighty blows. To my 
mind, this concentrated vigour, this proud con- 
sciousness of dignity and strength, is the greatest 
recompense of all." 

I go still further, and affirm that no love 
exists except for the chaste, not only because 
they alone know how to love who can, if need 
be, sacrifice pleasure to love, but because chas- 



MANLY HONOUR. 159 

tity is the condition of love. Much that is 
called by this beautiful name is but a vain 
shadow. People say, venal love, as if the two 
words did not cry out to find themselves side 
by side ! Where there is venality, there is no 
love. As soon as love is bought and sold, it 
no longer exists. So one says, sensual love, 
ignorant that one might as well say, stale wine 
or dead fire. 

We can never affirm too explicitly that youth 
is the dupe of this sensuality which promises 
what it cannot give. This is one of the most 
incontrovertible refutations of so-called posi- 
tivism. Love exacts the entire man, and what 
is noblest in us is most to its liking. To try to 
limit the innate luxuriance of this sentiment, 
which is a world in itself, to the narrow con- 
fines of sensation, is like trying to place the 
ocean in the hollow of a child's hand. And 
yet what man is seeking through all these mis- 
erable makeshifts is true love. One might 
almost say that all the errors of man, and even 
his corruptions, are only distorted manifesta- 
tions of a profound need which lies at the 
bottom of every human heart: the need of 



l6o COURAGE. 

loving and of being loved. The poet has said, 
and he never spoke more truly: — 

" If you wish to be loved, respect your love." 

I wish I might persuade all those young 
persons who read these pages, that love is the 
conquest of the valiant; that one must first 
be worthy of it, and that one becomes so only 
by remaining pure. For the man who loves 
and respects love, a world of intimate happi- 
ness is opened where ' the profane may not 
enter: a look, a clasp of the hand, a flower, 
fills him with a joy which has no equal. Love 
reveals itself to him as the great mainspring 
of life, as the inexhaustible source of beauty, 
benevolence, poetry. 

More than this, when a man is capable of 
love and worthy to be loved, there remains at 
the bottom of his heart, even during times of 
misfortune, neglect, absence, and the greatest 
sorrow, a divine ray, a penetrating perfume, 
like a breath of the spring breeze playing 
among the flowers and trees. The spring of 
life flows within him, and he is not at the 
mercy of things without. He can say: — 

" My heart hangs no more on the rays of the sun." 



MANLY HONOUR. l6l 

Compared to these treasures which increase 
by use, of what value is the merely sensual 
gratification of those who respect neither women 
nor their own persons? We can appraise its 
value by studying their countenances, their dis- 
course, their lives, made up of vulgarity, weari- 
ness, and indifference. Love, — .they do not 
believe in it; they have never known it. Like 
that great philosopher who is said to have 
scoured the heavens with his telescope without 
finding God, they affirm that love is a chimera. 
For them the fountain of life is only an empty 
cistern or a foul sewer. 



IT 



XII. 

THE FEEBLE. 



A CROWN OF SORROWS. 

A sorrow, wet with early tears, 

Yet bitter, had been long with me ; 

I wearied of this weight of years, 
And would be free. 

I tore my sorrow from my heart, 

I cast it far away in scorn ; 
Right joyful that we two could part, 

Yet most forlorn. 

I sought (to take my sorrow's place) 
Over the world for flower or gem ; 

But she had had an ancient grace 
Unknown to them ! 

I took once more with strange delight 
My slighted sorrow ; proudly now 

I wear it, set with stars of light 
Upon my brow. 

Adelaide Anne Procter. 

God has chosen the weak things of this world to con- 
found the strong. — Saint Paul. 

" There are no better consolers than those who have 
need to be consoled." 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE FEEBLE. 

While writing these pages for the benefit of 
those who are trying to become men; while 
urging them to cultivate their strength, to hus- 
band it, to discipline their nature, to respect in 
themselves the sources of life, — I have con- 
stantly made one sad reservation. An inward 
voice whispered to me : This is all very well for 
those who are healthy. Power is the attribute 
of people who are well. But what can you do 
with the sick, the infirm, with those whom an 
obscure and sad destiny has condemned to lan- 
guish? I might have said, after all, that if I 
succeeded in persuading a few strong youths 
to arm themselves for the combat, my end 
would have been accomplished, and my recom- 
pense complete. But I have refrained from 
using this argument. If I have done so, it is 
not from a sentiment of commiseration for those 
whose existence is one long pain. This senti- 



1 66 COURAGE. 

ment possesses me, it is true ; and I know no 
more agonising problem than that presented to 
us by mutilated, broken, and deformed youth. 
But it is precisely because I have sought to 
penetrate this darkness that I have discerned 
therein certain glimmers of light. If these pages 
should ever fall between certain frail hands, 
under certain eyes that have often wept, I should 
be very happy if they were understood and 
brought a little light. 

It is my conviction, and I have brought it 
back from the land of misery, as one picks the 
flower of hope on the edge of a precipice, — it 
is my conviction, then, that the feeble have a 
spring of moral force. And when all other 
sources fail, this one, like the source of tears, 
does not cease to flow. I would say to certain 
creatures who seem to be crushed beneath their 
helplessness, that they exercise a function of the 
highest importance, and that their weakness is 
a power of which the strong have need. This 
might be some comfort to them. 

Let us notice, in the first place, that the man 
who is excluded from ordinary social inter- 
course by some grave infirmity is not necessa- 



THE FEEBLE. 167 

rily excluded from humanity. On the contrary, 
he turns with greater energy towards man's 
common origin. His suffering is a perpetual 
reminder of it. Active life classifies men accord- 
ing to their interests, their parties, their social 
positions. Their sentiment of solidarity some- 
times becomes weakened. Secondary preoccu- 
pations become the principal thing. Before 
feeling themselves men, they feel that they are 
rich or poor, labourers or employers, politicians 
or clergymen, materialists or spiritualists. Some 
great trial, such as sickness, sweeps away all 
accidents of the surface and levels all condi- 
tions. Nothing makes us feel more strongly that 
we are brothers than misfortune. The invalid 
who, in the midst of his daily pains, comes to 
perceive that his moral sense has grown refined, 
and that he discriminates more delicately than 
others the thousand details unnoticed by them, 
soon discovers that although he may not be 
workman or physician or lawyer or notary, he 
has none the less his task to accomplish : it is 
to cultivate in those around him the sentiment of 
humanity. He soon perceives that he is being 
delivered from much servitude, and that this 



168 COURAGE. 

chain, though it holds him in a way, brings him 
also a certain liberty. I have seen grief bridge 
abysses which no industry, no good-will, could 
ever have crossed. Unhappy men, suffering 
under the same conditions of weakness and de- 
pendence, are drawn towards one another by an 
invincible impulse ; and whatever may be their 
worldly situation in other respects, — the one 
may be born of rich parents, the other of poor, 
the one may be cultivated, the other illiterate; 
or there may be a difference of religion and 
nationality, — that which unites them, namely, 
their common misfortune, is stronger than all 
that separates them. When two children of the 
same country meet one another at the anti- 
podes, the fact that they are compatriots 
attracts them. In their mother-country per- 
haps they would never have known one an- 
other, though they might have rubbed elbows 
every day. 

The great thing to be remembered is, that 
what unites men is stronger than what sep- 
arates them; we are united by what is innate 
in us, separated by superficial circumstances. 
He who makes this discovery enters into pos- 



THE FEEBLE. 169 

session of a power, and becomes an element of 
force for others. No man, whatever his social 
position, can find a more useful task to accom- 
plish than that of recalling to others the fact 
that we belong to a common humanity. The 
invalid can do this better than others, because, 
in the first place, he is a living example of what 
he preaches, and in the second, because every 
truth gains by being proclaimed by as feeble 
instruments as possible. 

We pass to another region where the power 
of those who suffer appears even more clearly. 
In the mind of humanity, the man who is ill is 
an eternal and touching protest against the right 
of the strongest, because for any one who has 
a spark of nobility in him, no manifestation of 
victorious force is comparable to this feeble cry. 
Utilitarian morality, the scientific doctrine of 
the struggle for existence, of the extermination 
of the weak, may at certain times seem proved 
to coldly logical minds. But the presence of 
a weak and feeble creature, above all, when he 
is dear to us, is alone sufficient to confute all 
these so-called positive theories. Everything 
is then changed. Force can be opposed to 



170 COURAGE. 

force, a person who defends himself vigorously 
may be attacked ; but it is difficult to attack 
the feeble, to pursue those who are unarmed. 
Their weakness is their protection, and this 
weakness is at times so eloquent that it often 
wins the greatest victories. 

Weakness, then, is one of the channels through 
which the revelation comes to man of the exist- 
ence of something mysterious, something more 
puissant than any physical force. Rendered 
sacred by his feebleness, it was the helpless 
stranger who inspired these words which we 
cannot too often repeat to ourselves : " Inas- 
much as ye have done it unto the least of 
these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 

The sick man has a special office to fulfil 
towards those who are well, for they also have 
their infirmities. Health indeed constitutes an 
infirmity of a distinct nature, inasmuch as it 
eventually incapacitates a man for enduring 
suffering. The impatient and instant discourage- 
ment of vigorous men when they are ill is well 
known. Can one blame them? They are but 
novices. They are only learning to spell the 



THE FEEBLE. 171 

alphabet of the language familiar to those who 
weep. There is an old anecdote which the 
blind tell to one another in their hours of re- 
creation, and which recounts how, in a certain 
year, the fogs in Paris were so thick that the 
inhabitants had to get the pensioners of the 
Quinze Vingts, who were used to finding their 
way about in the dark, to act as guides. I do 
not guarantee the truth of this story; but what a 
lesson it contains ! The strongest man may 
sometime have need of the cripple to guide 
him through the labyrinth of misery to which 
he is unaccustomed, and wherein he would lose 
himself. Are you vanquished and disturbed by 
momentary trials? Go and sit down by some 
one whose continual lot it is to suffer. You 
will learn many things by the simple compari- 
son, and you will be less depressed when you 
depart. 

And how will it be if these martyrs not only 
suffer, but have come to accept their infirmities 
and have learned pity in that hard school? 
They will commiserate and console you, and 
speak such words to you as they alone know 
how to speak. They will forget their great 



172 COURAGE. 

misfortune in order to think only of your small 
one. Nothing in the world is so comforting. 

When we come to consider courage, we can- 
not forget those who have given us examples of 
an almost superhuman courage, and whose long 
and patient endurance has almost exhausted 
suffering itself, as the anvil ends by wearing out 
the hammer. It is good for us to study this 
side of life. We then discover realities which 
have hitherto found no place in our calculations 
and plans. This weakness which fortifies, and 
this poverty which enriches, make a man pause 
and consider, and little by little his soul opens 
to the old and holy truth of which the cross is 
the eternal symbol : in suffering lies the salva- 
tion of the world. I summon the utilitarians, 
the apostles of might, the prophets of nothing- 
ness, the pleasure-seekers, before the tribunal 
of the feeble. For you they are as nothing; 
they do not exist. The survival of the fittest 
would demand that they should be put out of 
the way at their birth as useless and cumber- 
some. And if humanity were like the beasts, 
such might be the method of procedure. How 
is it that we have never been able to make up 



THE FEEBLE. 173 

our minds to it? How has it happened that 
among those who have been of service to the 
world there have been so many cripples and 
invalids? The stone which you rejected has 
become the corner-stone. I see in this the 
overwhelming proof of your own irremediable 
weakness. The world, such as you imagine it 
to be, is a fictitious and stunted world. You 
are vanquished by the paralytics, the blind, the 
deaf, by all who suffer on this earth. 

One does not recover from such defeats. 



XIII. 
FEAR. 



The Lord is the strength of my life ; of whom shall I 
be afraid ? — Psalm xxvii. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

FEAR. 

The opposite of courage is fear, a strange 
and redoubtable power. We must not imagine 
that its sombre reign existed only in the times 
of ignorance and barbarism. Fear undoubtedly- 
held preponderating sway in the primitive ' 
human world as in the animal world. To dis- 
trust everything and to fear everything ; to 
have its eyes open to every form, and its ears 
pricked up at every noise, is the lot of the poor 
hunted beast. It was also the lot of man in the 
days when he found himself unarmed against 
animals more powerful than himself, and in the 
presence of the untamed forces of Nature. The 
amount of fright experienced by humanity in 
its humble beginnings must have been enor- 
mous. Indeed, fear is our most ancient enemy, 
and it is not yet conquered. On the contrary, 
I consider epochs of great refinement very fa- 
vourable to its growth. Barbarism and extreme 



178 COURAGE. 

civilisation meet at this point, as at many others. 
In 111 nations there is a period of fine vigour 
and confidence which corresponds to sturdy 
youth and strong maturity. A sort of natural 
intrepidity and healthy security characterise 
them at these epochs. But later they become 
superstitious, like certain old people, and every- 
thing frightens them. 

The complications of life, factitious creeds, 
effeminate habits, extreme restlessness, the de- 
basement of conscience, the ideal of an inferior 
realism which sets enjoyment before man as 
the aim of his existence, delivers him over to 
fear. He is afraid to suffer, to give up his ease, 
to be constrained to make an effort, and, above 
all, he is afraid to die. This is the fear of fears. 
The elder Cato knew what he was saying when 
he cried to his effeminate contemporaries, 
" We are too much afraid of death, of exile, 
and of poverty." 

Woe to him who is afraid, for he will imme- 
diately find a master to take advantage of him ! 
This, our weak side, being known, we are led 
by it as the bear is led by the ring in his nose. 
Fear makes slaves of us. Those who take ad- 



FEAR. 



179 



vantage of man's fear are innumerable. Among 
them the most cunning are those who frighten 
men for the sake of reassuring them, in order 
that they may be regarded as benefactors. 

There are systems of government founded on 
fear, religions founded on fear. Many methods 
of education have no other foundation And 
to crown all, there is a morality founded on 
fear. This morality reduces itself to this: the 
good is to be found where there are no risks to 
be run, no blows to be received, no money to 
be lost. Many men have no other rule of con- 
duct. They may thus escape certain common 
vices, but they certainly escape being good 
men. To remain honest, to do good to your 
neighbours, to speak the truth, to have the 
courage of your opinions, — in a word, to do 
your duty, — cannot always be accomplished 
without running a certain risk. Good actions 
entail their consequences, and sometimes by no 
means pleasant ones. It is well to know this, 
especially when one is young. * If a fear of con- 
sequences sometimes prevents evil, it much 
more often prevents good. No ; fear is not a 
sentiment on which to found morality. It is 



« 
l8o COURAGE. 

pre-eminently a demoralising agency. I sub- 
mit this reflection to those who are to-day, 
and very legitimately, concerned with teaching 
hygiene to the young. There is nothing better, 
provided they do not exaggerate. By exciting 
an excessive fear of disease in the individual, 
they run the risk of not only making him die 
by slow torture, but of rendering him pusillani- 
mous. An excessive fear of microbes, of con- 
tagion, of destructive agencies, is the beginning 
of cowardice. Take care that the man who is 
so exclusively occupied in running away from 
unhealthy influences does not end by fleeing 
from himself. Duty is very often unhealthy. 
The fear of catching cold, or even a more 
serious illness, must not hinder you from being 
men ! 

I wish to speak now of a form of fear against 
which no one can be too well armed; and that 
is the fear of ridicule. A proverb, which is 
essentially Frenrh, declares that ridicule kills. 
The creed of a great number of our compatri- 
ots does not extend further. We must get rid 
of -this national belief as of a disgraceful weak- 



FEAR. I8l 

ness. Ridicule only kills those who fear it. 
To be called ridiculous is not a sufficient reason 
for beating a retreat. Where is the idea, inven- 
tion, institution, man, or act, that has not been 
called ridiculous? " You are ridiculous," is 
the last argument of those who have no other, 
and is the equivalent in another form of a blow 
with the sword, or an insult, both of which prove 
nothing and never can prove anything. All 
that is best and most sacred among our pos- 
sessions, the purest glory, and the most incon- 
testable merit, have been scoffed at. Ridicule 
is so little fatal that it has tried in vain to kill 
the things that are most ridiculous. Men of 
intelligence and heart have laughed at stu- 
pidity, vice, grotesque customs : stupidity flour- 
ishes, vice prospers, the grotesque parades 
itself. And sceptics, cynics, and impostors 
have railed at faith, virtue, truth : faith is not 
dead, virtue remains, and truth is immortal. 

We must be rational, therefore, where ridicule 
is concerned, and must say to ourselves that 
each person always seems ridiculous to some 
one. At bottom, if anything is ridiculous, it is 
this foolish fear of ridicule. For he who as- 



1 82 COURAGE. 

pires never to be ridiculous is like a man who 
wishes not to walk either with his right foot or 
his left, or to jump with both of them together. 
It is impossible to escape ridicule; we must 
contrive to be able to brave it with a tranquil 
conscience. Then we shall perceive the hollow- 
ness of this manikin that frightened us. He has 
no power against a person who is not afraid of 
him. Alas ! we think too much about him. 
Youth sacrifices to this terrible divinity. If it 
only sacrificed its defects, I should not mind. 
But it sacrifices its good intentions, its treasures 
of confidence, its enthusiasm, its piety! To 
throw the gold which one holds in one's hand 
into the pit because the passer-by finds it a 
ridiculous object, seems to me too sad. Let us 
rise and recruit our allies against this spreading 
plague ! 

I conjure every young man to question him- 
self very earnestly on the subject of fear. It is 
a question of life and death. Just as alcohol 
is much stronger than the wine from which it is 
derived, so is fear infinitely more fatal and in- 
jurious than the circumstances which evoke it. 
It is better to fall a prey to beasts than to phan- 



' FEAR. 183 

toms. How sad is a life perpetually agitated by 
fear ! I pity the man who pursues his way like 
a hunted animal, hearing the cries of the mob 
behind him, and knowing neither repose nor 
tranquillity. For there is always some cloud on 
the horizon, some snake in the grass, some fire 
that smoulders, some robbers that threaten, 
some microbe lying in wait for us, some scoffer 
who is looking at us. We can say of fear as 
the believer said to God : " If I ascend up into 
heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in 
hell, behold, Thou art there." 

There is no external refuge from fear, since 
its abode is in the heart. And it is there that 
we must attack it. 

Young friend, examine your heart. Are you 
afraid, and of what are you afraid? Tell me 
what you fear, and I will tell you what you are, 
for the quality of the man is shown by the sort 
of thing he fears ; but I will also tell you how 
to conquer your fear. And from what malady 
would you rather be healed than from that? Is 
there any joy possible for him who sees the 
sword of Damocles eternally suspended over 
his head? 



1 84 COURAGE. 

Here is a little advice which may aid you to 
conquer your fear. I acknowledge that the 
means are humble; do not despise them, how- 
ever. We must learn little by little, as the an- 
cient soldiers said, to drag our carcass where it 
is afraid to go. There are nervous fears, and 
others which have their seat in the imagination. 
When we learn to perceive that the exterior 
reality does not correspond to the formidable 
agitation we experience, we have taken a step 
in advance. There is a profound psychological 
fact beneath the German expression : Ichfurchte 
mich. Translated literally, this means, " I am 
afraid of myself." And, in fact, the kingdom of 
fear lies within us. It is not the objects which 
terrify us, but the state in which we allow them 
to throw us. Recall the two characters in the 
" Magic Flute," both of them of terrible aspect. 
Their mutual fright makes them throw them- 
selves at each other's feet at the same time, 
with the cry, " Spare me ! " How heartily we 
laugh at the two fools ! Yet we often resemble 
them in our insensate cowardice. Let us avow 
it humbly, and try to correct it. We must be- 
come familiar with what we fear; we must walk 



FEAR. 185 

around it, touch it, and examine it. What 
seems gigantic at a distance often seems natural 
at closer range. To fly from what we fear is not 
the way to lessen our fear; quite the contrary. 
Some are afraid of the night, like children. To 
walk alone along a road or through the forest 
frightens them. If such be their case, the best 
means is not to take to flight at the first noise 
heard or the first shadow seen. The more they 
run, the more they will be afraid. They will 
come to believe that the devil and his men are 
at their heels And in every instance it is the 
same. Woe to the fugitives ! The greater the 
number, the greater the disaster, for fear, like 
courage, is contagious. It must be resisted as 
soon as shown. 

We must make use of the same means for 
taming and calming ourselves as we use with 
skittish horses. As soon as they swerve from 
the straight line or even prick up their ears in 
a suspicious manner, we tighten the reins or 
touch them with the whip. This helps to re- 
assure them. It is obvious that we must watch 
a skittish horse more closely than others. And 
when we know that we are impressionable, easily 



1 86 COURAGE. 

frightened, likely to run away, we must distrust 
ourselves. Our imagination and our nerves an- 
nounce events like those excited messengers 
who arrive out of breath to hurl some terrify- 
ing news at us. Half the time they have only 
seen from afar, and seen imperfectly. You must 
never believe them entirely, but reserve your 
judgment, control yourself, and await further 
details. A man runs into folly otherwise. A 
group of timid persons who exaggerate every- 
thing, and work on one another, resembles a 
crowd of madmen. A calm man in the midst 
of this saraband of epileptics seems like a gift 
from heaven. He has soon made the least ex- 
cited understand that the situation is not so 
serious as they imagine; and even if it were, 
being panic-struck is the last way to meet it. 
Of all the helpful qualities possessed by a 
courageous heart, this of being able to reassure 
the timid, to arouse the despondent to courage, 
to bring a little tranquillity, order, and light 
into the chaos of opposing elements, is one of 
the most precious. The thing most to be de- 
sired, in time of peace as in time of war, in pri- 
vate life as in political life, is a steadfast soul. 



FEAR. 187 

But it must be confessed that all of these 
particular efforts, despite their relative efficacy, 
are but insignificant aids to help us to courage. 

If the great support be wanting, the whole 
structure remains incomplete, and there is al- 
ways danger that fear may destroy it at some 
unexpected moment. The great support is 
this : it is the birth in us of something that 
banishes fear, and this something is love. Fear 
has its roots in our egotism. The watchword 
of every one who puts his whole hope and hap- 
piness in himself is, Tremble. In this lower 
region of life where egotistical interests and as- 
pirations reign, there is no moment of security. 
We must learn to love something outside our- 
selves, something greater and stronger. True 
courage, that which is not the growth of a day, 
and the result of mere physical valour, has its 
source in love. At the bottom of every genu- 
ine life lies the sacrifice of one's self. The 
courageous man is he who throws himself into 
the fray for the sake of truth, justice, the de- 
fence of the weak, the salvation of his country; 
it is he who, even when he has no formulated 
belief, perhaps, yet loves life because of the 



1 88 COURAGE. 

higher good to which he can consecrate it. 
He feels convinced that life does not mean eat- 
ing, drinking, and making merry, but that it is 
a consecration of all one is and has to those 
invisible realities which alone give meaning and 
value to earthly life. 

If you desire serenity, a calm mind, a happy 
freedom from care, you must join your forces 
with those superhuman forces whence the 
strength of man is derived. When you have 
placed your standard higher, and your only fear 
is the fear of committing a cowardly act, you 
will be delivered from all lower fears. On that 
day you will understand what the man who has 
no God but himself can never apprehend. The 
man who is ready to die for justice is the only 
man who understands why he lives. The man 
who at every instant is ready to sacrifice him- 
self through love, is the only one who lives and 
enjoys life. He alone is free who has given 
himself to God. The fear of the Eternal ban- 
ishes all other fear. 

All courageous acts depend on this disposi- 
tion of the heart. The secret of all great energy 



FEAR. 189 

and the ascendancy which it acquires lies in the 
fact that behind the most trivial word and deed 
is felt a determination to go to the end. 

I would like to finish with the words of a 
young soldier after his first battle. Some one 
asked him what he had felt, and he answered : 
" I was afraid of being afraid, but I was not 
afraid." The brave fellow! Let us try to be 
like him: let us always be afraid of being 
afraid, and then we shall never fear. 



XIV. 
THE STRUGGLE. 



Ich bin ein Mann und trage ein Schwert. (I am a man, 
and wear a sword.) — Hauff. 

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, 
I have kept the faith. — Saint Paul. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE STRUGGLE. 

I HAVE pointed out some of the sources of 
energy. Its use is sufficiently obvious from its 
nature, as I have tried to describe it. But it may 
not be without profit to add a few remarks on 
the subject. 

Energy is meant for action. And as man 
cannot act except in some determinate way, 
either for the good or against it, all action 
inevitably assumes the character of a struggle. 
Every act is a conflict. Combat is the word 
most frequently heard on the lips of our con- 
temporaries. Some of them welcome it; others 
curse it. I shall seek to open a path midway 
between these two extremes. 

To put an end to conflict is impossible. Life 
is a conflict. As long as it lasts, conflicts will 
endure. There is no getting away from this. 
To counsel us not to fight is to engage us to 
abdicate and to declare that life is an evil. To 
13 



194 COURAGE. 

say that the struggle is undertaken for life, and 
to understand by that, material existence, is to 
affirm that life is the supreme good. This may 
be true for the beasts, whose greatest misfortune 
is to perish. But for man, life is not the su- 
preme good ; otherwise how could we explain 
that the best among us are those who are ready 
to sacrifice their lives for something which is 
to them of more value than life? How can we 
explain that there are circumstances for every 
man under which it would be cowardly for him 
to cling to life? How explain that the exag- 
gerated fear of death is always a cause of 
servitude and debasement for mankind? How 
explain the consideration of the strong for the 
weak, which is the foundation of our modern 
philosophy? How explain the invincible hatred 
felt by the noblest of mankind for all violence, 
tyranny, and plunder? We cannot ignore these 
facts. In face of them, we cannot say that the 
low and brutal struggle for material existence 
is the law of the world, — one which an incom- 
plete observation has mistaken for the central 
motive of the drama of history. The supreme 
struggle of any creature is for its supreme good ; 



THE STRUGGLE. 195 

and in the case of man, his supreme good is not 
life, but justice. The great and righteous strug- 
gle is the struggle for justice. All other con- 
flict is but the imperfect image of this. 

In speaking of war, properly so-called, I 
would like to add that it is rare for human 
affairs, and especially great conflicts, to present 
themselves under well-defined aspects of good 
and evil. But we can always affirm this : The 
essential character of a war depends on the 
amount of moral force and ideality interwoven 
with the material interests and necessities in- 
volved. It is an inferior kind of war that is 
undertaken for bags of rice, mines of gold or 
coal, and political intrigues. I would rather 
fight for the Holy Sepulchre. There was much 
more moral grandeur in the Crusades than in a 
large number of the very positive enterprises 
we are accustomed to decorate with the name 
of great wars. We may bring thousands of 
men into action, spend millions, destroy and 
sack cities, bring into play all our material 
and moral resources, and yet be animated only 
by miserable motives. We ought rather to call a 
great war one for which we can feel enthusiasm, 



196 COURAGE. 

and one in which the stakes are such that a 
man can suffer and die without saying to him- 
self: " What was the good of it? " When a 
man marches to death, the least he can ask is, 
Why? And yet this satisfaction is too often 
lacking to him. How many battles are worth 
the blood that is shed? If we could not say 
that they have prevented our energies from fall- 
ing asleep, and have given occasion for precious 
exhibitions of courage and devotion, we should 
have no consolation. This is not a polemic 
against war in general. My intention is to show 
that this word has many meanings, and that we 
can neither condemn nor approve of the institu- 
tion en bloc. The thing that strikes me painfully 
in the ordinary polemics against war is the utili- 
tarian idea behind them, and also the frightful 
descriptions of all the suffering entailed. It is 
not the blood shed that makes war so terrible, 
nor the wounds, deaths, fears, and unspeakable 
catastrophes. For when these are endured for 
the sake of justice, liberty of conscience, or 
national integrity, who can hesitate? What 
hecatombs would not be better than the igno- 
miny of slavery accepted through fear of suf- 



THE STRUGGLE. 197 

fering? What horrors of the battlefield could 
be worse than peace at any price ! We must 
not desire peace for utilitarian motives. It is 
not because of its cost that a war must be 
shunned; we all know that the best things are 
the dearest. Utilitarian reasons are very poor 
reasons. The end of utilitarian morality is 
meanness, corruption, and filth. Blood is better 
than mud. 

I know all that can be said legitimately 
against an armed peace; I know the wide- 
spread vice engendered by militarism. But 
the question is not reduced to that. Who can 
tell us that this utilitarian age has not, despite 
itself, begot its own counterpoise in its military 
institution? Would our society, as it stands, 
be capable of creating a school of discipline, 
abnegation, and a tradition of impersonality, 
comparable to the army? Who knows if the 
nations, in their present state of rather low 
morality, are not called upon to watch one 
another and excite one another, in order to 
escape somnolence and decay? International 
peace will come when the world is worthy of 
it; at present, perhaps it would only hasten 



198 COURAGE. 

universal decay. However that may be, no 
one will contradict me, I am sure, when I as- 
sert that the soldier is one of the most admi- 
rable figures in the world. When Saint Paul 
wished to depict a Christian armed for justice, 
he borrowed his terms from the equipment of 
the soldier ; and Christ himself, the great apostle 
of peace, has said : " I am come to bring the 
sword." 

But let us return to our subject, which is the 
struggle, while using the word in its most gen- 
eral meaning. As long as evil, iniquity, and 
violence exist in the world, every man worthy 
of the name will feel obliged to combat them 
with all the forces at his command. 

Everything that we do, we do with this con- 
flict in view. A good soldier, whether he eats, 
drinks, sleeps, exercises his muscles, enlightens 
his mind, or polishes his arms, does so with 
the aim of being the better able to fight. 

He is not allowed to do anything that will 
diminish his strength. And the great question 
for each individual is, How will my actions 
count in the struggle for justice? — A man is 
not complete unless he is armed. 



THE STRUGGLE. 199 

Nothing is finer than a combat, if it be a 
righteous one, whether carried on by the sword, 
word, or pen. For nothing is unimportant in 
it. Those who sound the clarion, those who 
provide nourishment, fulfil their function as well 
as the sentinel on guard, or the captain com- 
manding the assault. One of the finest exam- 
ples of human solidarity is exhibited by an 
organised struggle, wherein each man occupies 
his place and does his duty; wherein the leader 
and the soldier are confounded in one action. 

Oh, what a valiant warrior is humanity, armed 
for justice, truth, liberty, for all those powers 
which deserve to be fought for ! Oh, what a 
splendid school is that wherein so many vete- 
rans and companions in arms, united in all 
times and nations, teach the same discipline, 
the same devotion, and support proudly the 
same hardships under the holiest of flags ! 

Is it necessary to add that the indelible char- 
acter of the great and good fight, and the dis- 
tinctive badge of those engaged in it are, 
" Loyalty, Truth, and Courtesy"? It is impor- 
tant to distinguish between the cause of this 
perfect cavalier who is for me the ideal man, 



200 COURAGE. 

and that of all the filibustered, desperadoes, 
and brigands of the pen and sword. Down with 
all perfidious arms and rascality ! I confess 
with infinite grief that loyalty and courtesy are 
fast disappearing from our combats. It is easy 
to see the reason of it. We are animated by 
party spirit rather than a desire for justice. 
And this is why, in almost all -our struggles, 
justice is the defeated combatant. I conjure 
all young men who understand the necessity of 
righteous warfare to purify their arms and their 
intentions. It is a sin to believe that all things 
are fair in war, whether it be a war of nations 
or of ideas. 

It is not necessary for the brave defence of 
one's country to regard the enemy as a wild 
beast, and forget that he is a man. He who is 
animated by these savage sentiments is, more- 
over, likely to feel them for all his adversaries, 
even when they are his countrymen. He is 
blind and fanatic, and ready to treat his com- 
patriots as if they were foreign enemies. No 
nation is honoured in being defended by brutes ; 
it is rather dishonoured and weakened. Fanati- 
cism is like those dangerous explosives which 



THE STRUGGLE. 201 

kill those who handle them almost as often as 
those for whom they are destined. 

The same rule holds good in the conflict of 
ideas. 

You are persuaded that you are in the right, 
and you attack what you believe to be danger- 
ous errors in philosophy, politics, morals, and 
religion. And you do well. The worst atti- 
tude of mind is that which considers the for 
and against about equally balanced in all these 
questions, and thinks that intelligent men do 
not fight for ideas. But be careful not to 
imagine that the choice of weapons is a matter 
of indifference, and that arrows may be made 
from any wood. When one fights for the truth, 
one owes it to himself and his cause to be very 
scrupulous in all his proceedings. And the 
greater the energy of the attack, the greater the 
need of conscientiousness. The surgeon dis- 
infects his instruments before using them. 

I look upon any one as a malefactor who 
defends his political faith, or his moral and 
religious belief, without respecting his adver- 
saries. The ruses, the calumnies, the pitfalls, 
the betrayals, by means of which one seeks to 



202 COURAGE. 

advance a cause, always compromise it. There- 
in lies the secret of the impotence of so many 
causes that are genuinely worthy. Their pro- 
moters ruin them, because they fight with un- 
fair weapons. Society finally comes to be a 
confused melee, wherein unscrupulous adversa- 
ries exterminate one another, calumniating and 
dishonouring one another, under pretext of 
serving righteousness, liberty, justice, conscience. 
Who will deliver us from party spirit, that pes- 
tilential virus which is more devastating than 
deadly fevers and rabies? 

A word of comfort now for those pacific sol- 
diers whose hearts are troubled by the perpetual 
warfare in the midst of which they seem to be 
thrown. They deplore the fact that somehow 
or other they are always forced into the posi- 
tion of being some one's adversary. If their 
adversary were only some one whom they could 
attack without regret ! But he is often respect- 
able, and frequently bound to them by ties of 
blood or friendship. How hard it is to struggle 
against those we love and admire ! 

This is what I would say to these wounded 
hearts, — Be happy ! You are in one of the 



THE STRUGGLE. 203 

most favourable situations for the realisation of 
righteousness. The sentiments which these 
adversaries arouse in you will help you to con- 
tend with all probity, and to furnish to those 
whose eyes are upon you an example of what 
is rarest, — a loyal conflict. It is not you who 
created the world, and made struggle the law 
of all progress. You are neither sufficiently 
exalted nor far enough off to view the whole. 
Fulfil your immediate duty. It may be that 
you are attacking persons who are right in 
defending themselves, and who would do wrong 
to capitulate. Their duty is to resist, yours to 
attack. 

This is neither contradiction nor sophistry. 
Let no one say, They cannot both be right. 
Undoubtedly if a man tried to sustain two op- 
posite theses at the same time, he would be but 
a dilettante. But that two men should be right 
in upholding opposite ideas and interests is not 
only possible but necessary, and nothing is 
more profitable to justice and truth. One is 
on the right road to the discovery of truth when 
one is contending with a friend, and there is 
no danger of bitterness impoisoning the weap- 



204 COURAGE. 

ons. Moreover, while fighting, they are still 
achieving two different parts of the same work. 
And thus one's grief is turned into consolation. 
It is well that two opposing causes, but two 
destined to complement each other in a higher 
sphere, should be upheld by men whose con- 
victions are as strong as their good-will, and 
who are as fraternal as they are resolute. Do 
not fear that they will waver or defend their 
cause lukewarmly because they do not hate 
one another. The cause is in good hands. It 
will be better served than by fanatics who will 
forget it to treat each other as Turk and Moor, 
and who will drag their standard through the 
mire of personalities. 

I have sometimes found great comfort in 
studying the lesson taught to us by a simple 
clock. Look at this clock well: it is an organ- 
ised and perpetual struggle between the spring, 
which wishes to fly out, and the pendulum, which 
wishes to stop. If the spring were left to itself, 
it would fly off all at once. And the pendulum 
without the spring would not budge. The 
motive-power of the one has need of the in- 
ertia of the other, and vice versa. The admi- 



THE STRUGGLE. 205 

rable precision of the mechanism results from 
the regular play of these two opposing forces. 
How many times, while watching this simple 
phenomenon, I have said to myself: When we 
contend for authority, liberty, individual integ- 
rity, solidarity, science, faith, for the property 
and right of the poor, are we not imitating this 
mechanism? 

Just so the struggle between the classes, 
which exalts some and makes others groan, 
ought to become, if carried on in good faith, 
a co-operation for social justice. Let each one 
maintain his right, become the interpreter of 
the wants arising from his office, of the needs 
which his particular condition causes him to 
feel vividly, and provided that there be good- 
will, an understanding will result from the loyal 
opposition. 

Each man, each tendency of the mind, each 
nation, has its role to play, its word to say in 
the world. It is for this that they are here. 
Among these diverse forces some are destined 
to take the lead. If they had no counterpoise, 
they would work so quickly that everything 
would be deranged. Society would be like a 



206 COURAGE. 

clock whose spring flies off. Others are des- 
tined to act as restraints, to lengthen and regu- 
late the movement. But if they acted alone, 
everything would come to a stop. This is why, 
whether they like it or not, they are obliged to 
struggle against each other; let us say rather, 
to work together, for their struggle is the very 
life of society. In this struggle, as in all other 
combats, there are risks to be run, property to 
lose, wounds, suffering, sacrifices to endure; 
and therefore I would like to end this chapter 
with this declaration: One thing only seems 
to me nobler than to deal blows for justice, and 
that is to receive them. 



XV. 
THE SPIRIT OF DEFENCE. 



Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such 
as are appointed to destruction. — Proverbs. 

Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of 
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. — The Gos- 
pel according to Saint Matthew. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE SPIRIT OF DEFENCE. 

WHAT takes place in your mind when you 
see a powerful creature maltreat one who is 
weak and unarmed? 

I feel a furious desire to run and attack the 
strong and protect the weak. 

Take this instinctive impulse for your con- 
scious rule of conduct. Follow it always with- 
out hesitation. It is a better guide than all the 
prudent wisdom of those who consider the risks 
before coming to the succour of the oppressed. 
If you do not follow this impulse, you will be- 
come the man of circumstances, the slave of 
success. You will be the accomplice of the 
strong, while waiting till he chooses a victim 
for you. A man, you will yet be worth less 
than the dog who barks at a robber regardless 
of blows, or throws himself into the water to 
save a life. 

x 4 



2IO COURAGE. 

We speak of the right of defence ; it is rather 
of the duty that we should speak, for the right 
maybe renounced, and it is often more generous 
to renounce one's strict rights than to assert 
them with acrimony. But it is permitted to 
no one to sacrifice duty. I shall try to show 
to what degree defence is urgent and inevi- 
table ; not only defence of the feeble, but 
defence in general. This will not be a super- 
fluous task, for among the many obscure points 
of human conduct there are not many more 
often misunderstood than this. The eagerness 
and ardour which characterise youth should be 
instructed on this point. 

Not that we have need in general of being 
urged to defend ourselves. But it is important 
to know what sort of defence is in question, and 
in what spirit it should be undertaken. The 
majority of men are prompt enough at repartee, 
and extremely quick to take offence. Their 
sensitiveness is very acute. Every external 
shock produces on them the effect of a shot 
in the mountain gorges ; the echo repeats it a 
thousand times and amplifies it until it sounds 
like the roll of thunder. 



THE SPIRIT OF DEFENCE. 211 

For the man whose chief idea is the importance 
of his little individuality, every offence is a crime 
of lese-majesty. He springs up at once; but 
look at him ! Is it for defence? It is rather for 
vengeance. There is no likeness between these 
two. Vengeance consists of unclean and low 
personal elements which cut us off from it en- 
tirely. It inspires also a sort of infernal joy 
which the majority cannot resist, and whose 
attraction may lead us far. We have agreed 
to disapprove of the law of retaliation : an eye 
for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. This is a mis- 
take. The law is not barbarous. It is a great 
advance towards justice. For to be content to 
mete out vengeance according to the offence 
is to give proof of moderation. How many 
people in whom the brute is easily awakened 
would gain by being led back to this law of 
retaliation ! I know whereof I speak when I 
say that youth is not a time when one has least 
need to hear these truths. Rancour, although 
represented with wrinkled face and hollow eyes, 
embitters many young hearts. I do not intend 
to lend my voice here to the surly, the quarrel- 
some, the fretful, to those who have always 



212 COURAGE. 

some vengeance to satisfy, some spite to pay 
off. I wish, on the contrary, to set them aside 
now, in order to avoid all confusion. They are 
the worst caricatures of the righteous defence 
which I advocate. 

The first characteristic of a righteous defence 
is impersonality. It is not undertaken for the 
private account of any one, no matter who it 
may be. It is an act of justice. 

Suppose some one has done you an injury: 
he may have been guilty of calumny, or theft, 
or some violent attack on you ; it is not pri- 
marily your affair. You have neither to avenge 
yourself nor to ignore what has been done. 
But humanity and justice having been attacked 
in your person, you must take measures against 
the injustice. In avenging yourself, you would 
but increase the injustice. In allowing yourself 
to be ill-treated with impunity, you would share 
in the wrong done and encourage it. You 
would encourage it not only with regard to 
yourself, which would be the least evil, but 
with regard to the whole body politic. You 
would allow the enemy to make a breach 
through which he could enter and do harm to 



THE SPIRIT OF DEFENCE. 213 

others besides you. If it were not understood 
that a man would defend himself, the Golden 
Age of injustice and violence would begin, and 
all that is honest and pacific would become 
the prey of the wicked. We are therefore 
obliged to defend ourselves and our neigh- 
bours. The question is not whether he is con- 
cerned or I, but whether justice has been 
menaced and compromised, and must there- 
fore be defended. And what I have said of 
the individual applies to societies and nations. 
To fall upon thieves, murderers, corrupters of 
youth, poisoners of the public mind or health, 
is not a right, but a duty. And what if I choose 
to allow myself to be robbed, to be attacked in 
the street, to be deceived ? You have not the 
right to choose ; for when you allow these 
wrongs, you compromise the right of others of 
whom you are not the master. You misunder- 
stand solidarity. You establish in your private 
life a centre of infection, which will be propa- 
gated. It may chance that society has not the 
means to prevent your doing this ; but I have 
the right to say to you that then you will be- 
come the accomplice of assassins, thieves, and 
sowers of immorality. 



214 COURAGE. 

The same holds true for a nation : it is not 
your right to carry arms and to defend your- 
self any more than it is your right to defend 
your country; it is your absolute duty. A 
nation has not the right to allow itself to be 
dismembered, insulted, or even intimidated. If 
it does it from a pacific spirit, it becomes the 
accomplice of the enemy, and weakens the right 
of its neighbours and the general security. 

Defence is a sacred thing. And it is for this 
reason that I think it sinful to discountenance 
it. However great my respect may be for a 
man like Tolstoi, I cannot help but find dan- 
gerous the paradoxes he asserts on this sub- 
ject, and which may be summed up thus : 
" Defence engenders evil. The precautions 
which we take against offenders redoubles their 
animosity. A police multiplies thieves and as- 
sassins. Laws and regulations of all sorts pro- 
voke misdemeanours and crimes. A nation, by 
defending itself, but engenders innumerable new 
conflicts for the future. By giving up defence, 
we would do away with all attack and struggle as 
by enchantment." These theories are founded, 
it is true, on the words of Christ: " But I say 



THE SPIRIT OF DEFENCE. 21 5 

unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whoso- 
ever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn 
to him the other also." But we may ask our- 
selves if these words should be interpreted liter- 
ally. And we may remember that He who 
spake them attacked the Pharisees with great 
vehemence, and drove the money-changers from 
the temple with a scourge. Would it not be 
casting pearls before swine to use gentleness 
under certain circumstances? 

And yet we must remember that the strongest 
weapons humanity has ever used in its struggle 
against evil have been patience, pardon, gentle- 
ness, and love. They have done more than 
vanquish the adversary; they have often con- 
verted him, which is more difficult. And if we 
admire the courageous champions who have 
given their strength in the service of a good 
cause, we must admire still more those who 
have aided it by abnegation,, silent suffering, 
and the immolation of themselves. The high- 
est palm belongs to them, and they alone have 
the right to teach us what is just in the way 
of defence, because they have practised it in 
its sublimest form. I think that we are true 



2l6 COURAGE. 

» 

to this spirit when we say : " It is an absolute 
duty to struggle against evil on every occasion, 
but among the means of defence we must 
choose the least violent, and only resort to the 
others in the last extremity." What we must 
especially never forget is the spirit of defence. 
This is everything. 

Just as it is possible to wound more grievously 
by words than by the sword, and accomplish a 
work of hate under a gentle exterior, so it is 
possible to do good and heal by means that 
are often called violent. The man who resists 
me by fire and sword when I wish to do evil 
is doing a deed of benevolence, although he 
achieves it with redoubtable severity ; and if I, 
who am working iniquity, could understand the 
motive that animates him, how much he suffers 
when he pursues me, overtakes me, strikes me, 
I should call him my benefactor, and should 
enroll myself under his banner. 



* 



I must be pardoned for insisting on this duty 
of defence. We have great need to be reminded 
of it constantly. I see persons everywhere 



THE SPIRIT OF DEFENCE. 2\J 

wreaking vengeance, and very few who under- 
stand veritable defence. The majority, when 
they themselves are not concerned, do not stir. 
Some of them excuse their inertia by saying: 
" God, truth, and justice are strong enough to 
defend themselves ; they have no need of us." 
What gross error ! The consequence of this 
reasoning would be the suppression of all ac- 
tivity. Why should we be here if we had noth- 
ing to do? Unfortunately it is through us that 
evil exists, and there is no hope that it will ever 
be atoned for and vanquished except through 
us also. God acts in humanity by human forces, 
as He acts in nature by natural forces. We 
may maintain, it is true, that no man is neces- 
sary, that the best may be lacking, and the work 
go on; but we must not exaggerate this way of 
looking at things. From another point of view, 
it is just as true and more encouraging to be- 
lieve that we are needed. And it is a fact that 
many gaps, many empty places and terrible 
breaches are left by the loss of certain valiant 
and active men. Let us never say, then, that the 
good will be achieved without us. Let us say 
still less that the evil about us does not con- 



218 COURAGE. 

cern us, when it does not touch us directly in 
our property or health. The world is full of 
so-called good people who reason in this way. 
When they themselves are attacked, they are 
the first to cry out for help. These good 
people should be classed with the cheats, 
thieves, and calumniators by profession. Their 
inertia aids in the growth of all these wrongs 
more surely than the most favourable conditions 
in the development of microbes. " Let us mind 
our own business," is a poor motto, for it is 
• equivalent to saying: " My neighbour's affairs 
are no concern of mine." 

Everything is our concern. The maxim, 
" Do not do unto others what you would not 
that they should do unto you," has for corol- 
lary: " Do not permit anything to be done to 
others that you would not have done unto you." 
It is good to feel thus. We try harder to be- 
come strong when we feel that some one is 
dependent on us. Among the happy periods 
of life, I count those when we are permitted to 
protect some one. To be there, to hinder a 
weak creature from being crushed, to act, to 
suffer for his sake, to espouse his cause passion- 



THE SPIRIT OF DEFENCE. 219 

ately, and to have no rest or peace until it is 
gained, — I know nothing finer than this. 

In the Old Testament we read: "And God 
said unto him, Abraham : and he said, Behold, 
here I am." Everywhere where there is a just 
defence to be undertaken, a voice, always the 
same, calls each man by his name. Happy is 
he who can rise and answer: "Behold, here 
lam!" 

Young friends, these are things to fill your 
days with useful meditations, and your heart 
with beautiful and noble desires, that will help 
to conquer the evil that is in you. Protect the 
feeble ; protect the poor; protect those who are 
calumniated ; protect the absent. It is ignoble 
to fight with a pistol against one who is armed 
with a stick, and, above all, when you are many 
against one. This is, however, just what we 
do whenever we take part in an attack on one 
who is absent. " The absent are always in the 
wrong." This is a terrible saying, for we must 
add : it is because there is no one to defend 
them. Do we understand that in saying the 
absent are always in the wrong, we are accus- 
ing the whole world of cowardice? We must 



220 COURAGE. 

not submit to this shame. If you do not know 
the person attacked, show that you do not be- 
lieve what is said against him until you have 
sifted the matter, and he has had time to justify 
himself. If you know him, and he is dear to 
you, speak up for him if he is worthy of it; if 
not, make those present understand that it is 
better to accuse people to their faces than be- 
hind their backs. Calumnies and untrue reports 
have reached such a pitch, both in public and 
private, that we must take some measures to 
protect ourselves against them. I have always 
noticed that one voice raised in the defence of 
the absent, it might be the voice of a young girl 
or child, carried great weight even against a 
multitude of accusing voices, or the silence of 
the indifferent. 

Of all the absent, there are none so helpless 
as those who are absent forever: I mean the 
dead. We must defend the dead. When a man 
is once in his grave, his enemies are no longer 
restrained. They attack those whom he pro- 
tected, — his wife, his children; they lay hands 
on his work. Every time that you have the op- 
portunity of standing up for the rights of those 



THE SPIRIT OF DEFENCE, 221 

who are dead, do it. You will experience some- 
thing in accomplishing this duty that you will 
gain in no other way. By respecting humanity 
until death and in death, you will come to un- 
derstand that it is not enough for a man to die 
to become nothing. You will soon perceive 
that the best of what we possess has come to 
us from those who died for some holy cause. 
As, alas, there are living men who are dead, so 
there are dead men who still live ! Their mem- 
ory, their love, their spirit, will penetrate yours. 
They gave their life for the good of all ; and from 
the mysterious Beyond they watch for others to 
take up the work which they left incomplete. 

What higher grace can we wish for a young 
man than to feel within his soul the souls of the 
great dead awake? 

Thus, step by step, the defence of justice leads 
us higher. It is a road that ascends; and when 
we have reached the summit to which it leads, 
we catch a glimpse of the infinite life. 



XVI. 

THE HEALING POWER OF BENEFICENCE. 



For the Son of man is come to save that which was 
lost. — The Gospel according to Saint Matthew. 

The Gospel alone can restore to the soul, even to the 
most devastated soul, all the verdure of youth, the fresh- 
ness of the impressions of childhood, and, if I may so 
express it, all its virginity. — Alexandre Vinet. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE HEALING POWER OF BENEFICENCE. 

Thus, step by step, we have arrived at the 
point when energy is especially made manifest 
in benevolence. 

Undoubtedly the kind of energy with which 
we are concerned is always united with benevo- 
lence ; otherwise it would be but an instrument 
of cruelty and of savage and destructive rage ; 
but the benevolence is not always equally evi- 
dent. When it dwells beneath the brazen armour 
of the warrior, it seems veiled ; and it is more 
consoling to see it at its work, smiling and 
helpful. Let us dwell for a moment on this 
part of its mission. 

It is solicitous for the victims of evil, for all 
who are struck down, vanquished, lost. It is to 
the honour of humanity that life seems to us 
more touching under its tormented and afflicted 
aspects than in all the plenitude of its force. 
Every one admires a vigorous tree, a beautiful 

15 



226 COURAGE. 

forest in tranquil majesty ; but when the tempest 
descends upon it, shaking it, twisting it, tearing 
it, we take the part of the tree against the 
tempest, and its broken branches, its trunk that 
has withstood the storm, appeal to us more 
strongly than ever. And so it is at certain 
hours, our eyes are less fascinated by the rising 
sun than by some poor little light among the 
evening shadows, struggling against wind and 
rain. There are men who cannot resist a cry 
of distress. As gold attracts the thief, a carcass 
the vulture, so these are drawn towards misfor- 
tune. They have received, I know not by what 
dispensation, an ordinance which has made them 
saviours; and as others have been born to do 
harm and destroy, they are come to bind up the 
wounds and assuage suffering. Caring less to 
discover the origin of a catastrophe than to 
comfort those who have been overwhelmed by it, 
they have declared a pacific war against wrong. 
Its immensity does not discourage them ; the 
insignificance of their efforts compared to the 
number of misfortunes and sins does not make 
them cast down their arms. In the eyes of 
sceptics, they are poor fools who are trying to 



THE HEALING POWER OF BENEFICENCE. 22? 

accomplish the impossible ; the positive philos- 
ophers smile at their naivete ; but they take no 
heed, and follow the dictates of their heart. At 
their instigation, a work of philanthropy has 
been organised in the world which is solicitous 
not only for physical suffering, illness, and 
poverty, but for moral infirmities, weakness of 
the will, and anguish of the heart. Pity has its 
tradition like crime, and we should be initiated 
in it early. 

I do not believe that youth should be crushed 
by the sight of sin and misery, nor that its 
horizon should be darkened by a too precocious 
revelation of the sorrows of the world. But it 
is equally bad to hide everything from youth. 
It is one thing to be overwhelmed daily with 
heart-rending recitals and startled by distress- 
ing scenes, and quite another to learn that 
there are beings who suffer, and to be initiated 
gently into the trials of life. A young man who 
has arrived at the end of his adolescence, and 
who has been .guarded from all . knowledge of 
suffering and death, is like a victim who has 
been purposely disarmed in order to be handed 
over to his executioners with more security* He 



228 COURAGE. 

is ignorant of one of the primordial laws of life, 
the law of sorrow. This is a serious lack as far 
as he himself is concerned, and renders him less 
useful to his neighbours. How can one who 
is ignorant of grief feel compassion for it and 
relieve it? 

There are many good reasons why we should 
bring youth into contact with sorrow. Grief 
matures and strengthens. It is through this 
baptism of fire that one really enters into the 
sanctuary of humanity. One is not a man until 
the waves of misery beat against his heart like 
ocean waves against the shore. Grief, moreover, 
has the power to purify us. A certain lightness 
of mind is incompatible with it. In fraternising 
with grief, we form a powerful alliance which 
enables us to live better lives. 

Do not fear that it will diminish joy. This is 
a mistake. Joy, like everything human that is 
holy and great, only flourishes under the reign 
of the common law, and not under that of 
privilege or caprice. He who hopes to be the 
exception, and to escape from the common law 
of suffering and pain, narrows his life instead of 
enlarging it. He tries to cultivate joy in the 



THE HEALING POWER OF BENEFICENCE. 229 

obscure retreat where egotism vegetates, and he 
might as well try to cultivate flowers in a cave. 

Moreover, youth must do violence to itself in 
order to refrain from sympathising with grief. 
What is more generous than a young heart? 
What more ready to be touched, and to fly to 
the succour of others without looking behind? 
Life often turns to us a sour face; wickedness 
and ingratitude harden our hearts. Some of us 
grow thick-skinned with advancing years. But, 
in general, when we are young we have not had 
our senses dulled to the grief of others. There 
are days when we wish well to the whole uni- 
verse, when we call down blessings on the 
unknown passers-by, when we pardon all our 
offenders, when our hearts are given to every 
one who suffers and weeps, when we should like 
to warm the feet of little children with our 
hands, and in spirit lay wreaths on the coffins 
of those who pass away without one friendly 
sign. And should all these sentiments be 
repressed? No, no. Do not resist your im- 
pulses to be pitiful. Help in the work of heal- 
ing; do your share in the holy labour of hope 
and beneficence. 



230 COURAGE. 

Who is better prepared for this task than 
youth? Youth lacks experience. But experi- 
ence is acquired by contact with those who 
possess it, and certainly the unhappy are not 
avaricious of it. They fear no competitors. 
Moreover, to be lacking in experience is not to 
be lacking in means. For the work of pity, 
youth possesses such powerful means that they 
almost seem a special grace. We have been 
told that a flower or a spider has sufficed to 
while away the tedium of certain prisoners. 
Nothing is more effectual than contact with 
youth to charm away sadness, to sweeten and 
console it. Youth brings with it life and hope. 
Without much to say or complicated means, it 
does us more good than many official consolers. 
If one only knew what part a smile, a visit, a 
friendly little gift, played in certain humble and 
unfortunate lives, one would not be sparing of 
these trivial presents. The old rabbi, Hillel, a 
contemporary of Jesus, summed up all his 
teaching of youth in the one saying, " Be good, 
my child." How many things one would do, 
and how many things one would give up for- 
ever, if one took this device as a rule of conduct ! 



THE HEALING POWER OF BENEFICENCE. 23 1 

Benevolence, — it is what we sigh for, because 
all of us suffer. To open our eyes, to cultivate 
in ourselves the delicate sense of human suffer- 
ing in order to divine it, to learn to touch 
wounds with a light hand, — why do so few men 
care to devote themselves to this task? It is, 
however, one of the most humane in the world. 
Why do we prefer to labour at the inhuman task 
of irritating and tormenting others, and causing 
their tears to flow? Be good, my child ! 

Along the dim path which men pursue, Be- 
nevolence alone sees clearly. To her, certain 
things are revealed which no one else per- 
ceives. And this is the reason why she proves 
all things by her simple presence. She is re- 
assuring, and signifies to any one who suffers 
and grieves, were he among the least, " Thou 
art not forgotten." This is why man, wicked 
though he may be, has recognised Benevolence 
as something divine. And God never appeared 
to him more clearly than in the image of a 
man who, moved by pity for man's sorrow and 
sin, sacrificed himself in order to deliver him 
from both. 



XVII. 

SURSUM CORDA. 



To honour God, 
To love humanity, 
Is to be a hero. 

Triades Gauloises. 

. . . Holy Father! I give myself to thee to-day in the most 
solemn manner. ... I renounce all masters who have domi- 
nated me ; all worldly joys, and all lusts of the flesh. I re- 
nounce everything that is perishable, to the end that God may 
be my all. I consecrate to thee all that I am and all that I 
have, — the faculties of my mind, the members of my body, my 
time, and my resources. . . . Deign to use me, O Lord, as an 
instrument destined to thy service. . . . May the name of the 
Lord be an eternal witness that I have signed this promise in 
the firm and righteous intention of keeping it. 

Jean Frederic Oberlin. 

Strasburg, January i, 1760. 

This was the point of departure of one of the noblest 
and most useful lives that have ever done honour to France 
and humanity. Jean Frederic Oberlin, born at Strasburg 
on August 31, 1740, became in 1767 the " Catholic Evan- 
gelical Minister " (this was the title he gave himself) of 
the rude parish of Ban-de-la-Roche, in a valley of the 
Vosges. During nearly sixty years he was its apostle, 
civiliser, and benefactor ; and he died there in his eighty- 
sixth year, on June 1, 1826. 

In his thirtieth year, he renewed the vow he had made 
ten years before. In the decline of his life, on re-reading 
once more his " act of consecration," he added on the 
margin : " Lord, have pity upon me ! " He was then 
eighty- two. He died four years later (June 1, 1826). The 
motto which he chose was, " Walk before God." In his 
will he wrote : " May you forget my name, and only re- 
member that of Jesus Christ." 



XVII. 

SURSUM corda! 

If the grain of wheat sleeping beneath the 
dark earth could foresee what it was to become, 
it would rejoice in thinking that it united in 
itself the labourer's toil and God's sun ; that it 
was to be the bread of the future, as it is the 
hope of to-day. It would submit gladly to its 
destiny, and accomplish it with love, through 
its germination, its flowering, and maturity, to 
the grinding beneath the millstone. 

If man could take account of what he is and 
what he might become, he would do the same. 

I have tried, in this book, to show the mag- 
nitude of our destiny. I desire to set it forth 
again in a few brief words. 

What is a man? 

A man is one who believes in life, in " the 
useful passing of the days," in productive la- 
bour, in the emancipating power of grief; one 



236 COURAGE.' 

who confides himself to the great Will which is 
at the foundation of all things. 

A man is one who knows brotherly love, who 
cannot conceive of his own happiness apart 
from that of others, who is one with the whole, 
who marches in the ranks and loves humanity 
as he loves his family and country, with all the 
emotion of his heart and all the power of 
sacrifice. 

A man is one who tries to govern himself, 
not according to his passions, his interests, or 
the caprice and violence of others, but in ac- 
cordance with the laws of justice. 

A man is one who knows how to fight and 
suffer for what is good, for what he loves, for 
what he worships. He is one who hates evil, 
and declares war against it without mercy, 
knowing well that our greatest enemy, and, in 
reality, our only one, is sin. 

And finally, a man is one who knows how 
to die ; who knows that in giving his life he is 
not losing it, but finding it: this is passing 
from the evanescent to the eternal. 



* * 



SURSUM CORDA! 237 

Young soldier on humanity's field of honour, 
to your post ! Do your best. Be valiant, be 
just, be confident ! You are serving a good 
cause, under a good leader. 

When the ancient Gauls were asked what 
they feared, they answered with superb dis- 
dain : " We fear only one thing, and that is that 
the heavens should fall ! " If you are con- 
vinced of the inestimable value of life, your 
heart will become as firm as those of your 
rugged ancestors; and when you feel yourself 
tremble before some danger in the path of 
duty, some one who is greater than the heav- 
ens and all the visible world will say to you : 
" Fear not, for I am with thee." 



THE END. 



